


It does OK... it does mean something...

by HammerToFall



Series: James and Teddy [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Aurors, Harry Potter Next Generation, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-25
Updated: 2017-07-25
Packaged: 2018-12-06 19:11:02
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 23
Words: 52,853
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11607129
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HammerToFall/pseuds/HammerToFall
Summary: Yes, James definitely didn’t fit into the ‘little brother’ category anymore. He was a man now. A gorgeous man. But he was still Teddy’s best mate, and it still seemed fundamentally wrong somehow to think of him in a sexual context. Not that that stopped Teddy from doing so.-A chronicle of how James and Teddy first got together, and the first major test of their relationship (with an auror murder mystery subplot, just to mix it up a bit).NOTE Chapters 1-6 can be read as a standalone get-together fic.





	1. It’s about time I took you out on the town

**Author's Note:**

> I actually starting writing this as a companion fic to the Scorbus I'm currently working on, but just had so much fun with these characters. Hope you like it too :)

Teddy was visiting the Potters for their usual Saturday night dinner (Sundays were strictly reserved for roast dinner at Molly Weasley’s). He had missed a few of them lately, being so busy with his Auror training. The studies were arduous, and the trainee field work was exhausting. He was basically either working or studying round the clock. And he was working damn hard, because he just didn’t know any other way to do it. He had never half-assed anything in his life. This determination was paying off however. He was getting glowing reports from his superiors, and was being fast-tracked up the ladder to the Auror entrance exam. He was expecting to sit it this summer, after only three years of training (it usually took four).  
  
He was still a year older than most of the other candidates though, having taken a couple of years out after Hogwarts to ‘find himself’. He had shied away from the Auror thing for a long time, convinced the only reason he felt compelled to do it was because of his parents’ legacy. And Harry’s influence of course. And he didn’t want to choose a career just because it was what everyone expected him to do. He wanted to do something that HE wanted to do.  
  
It took him an embarrassingly long time to figure out that he really did have a passion for crime solving. He wasn’t so fond of the firefights, but he could hold his own in a duel if he had to. And his detective work was excellent. Harry had been so proud when Teddy had come back from six months of dicking about in Thailand and delivered the news that he was ready to start Auror training. He had taken a personal interest in Teddy’s career, obviously. But Teddy shied away from any obvious nepotism. He wanted to earn his place, on his own merit. So Harry had placed him under the supervision of one of his colleagues. He was still technically Teddy’s boss, but Teddy didn’t report directly to him.  
  
Teddy had dropped everything to come to the family meal today though, as it was the Easter holidays and all the kids were home. There was a six year age gap between him and James, the eldest of Harry’s kids (not counting himself). There had been times when James was an incessantly chatty little kid following a moody teenage Teddy around, when he had found him annoying and wished he would leave him alone. But as they got older the age gap seemed to close, and they became best friends. Teddy was never not laughing when he was in James’s company. It was a shame, but not at all a surprise, when James was sorted in Gryffindor at school. Nevertheless they still hung out plenty, for the brief time that they were both at Hogwarts. James dragging Teddy into all sorts of childish pranks, in spite of his better judgement, and sullying his reputation as head boy of Hufflepuff. But Teddy wouldn’t have traded those memories for anything. He grinned, remembering McGonagall threatening to demote him if he didn’t stop getting into trouble, one eventful day when he and James had set a pack of knarls loose in the great hall.  
  
He didn’t get on quite as well with Al. He and James were not alike at all. The kid had always been moody and brooding, even before he hit puberty. Classic middle child syndrome. He could be fun sometimes if you could get past those huge walls he put up, but it was a lot of work getting through to him. Teddy didn’t mind people having emotional baggage (orphaned child of a werewolf, anyone?), but you didn’t need to be so bloody down about it all the time. Learn to laugh about it, even if it’s in just an ironic way, jeez. Teddy still loved Al though, the way that you still love a brother even if you don’t understand him and he annoys the hell out of you. And he supposed that Al was likely to grow out of this brooding thing that he did. Either that or grow in to it, and learn how to be witheringly sarcastic without just sounding manically depressed.  
  
Lily was the youngest, with nearly eleven years between she and Teddy. As such Teddy felt something more like an uncle to her than a brother. He remembered picking her up when she was about 5 and used to wear those huge princess dresses. She was growing up fast though and had just entered her teens. She was more like James than Al, but she wasn’t really that much like either of them. She was flighty and impulsive, but also very clever and quite precocious. And she was sassy – she could cut someone down with a snappy one liner that would sting for days. One of his favourite parts about these family dinners was watching her run rings around the rest of them. Her parents let her get away with bloody murder too. Partially because she was the baby of the family, but also partially, Teddy suspected, because she reminded them very much of a young Ginny.  
  
This meal passed much like any of the others. Harry questioned Teddy about his work and Teddy tried to keep his answers succinct, aware that they were boring everyone else at the table with the Auror talk. He and James laughed and joked about his latest school exploits and Teddy shared one or two snippets about funny mishaps at work, under Harry’s amused and only slightly disapproving gaze. He asked Ginny about her new recruits and she lit up talking about about quidditch strategy. Teddy knew she missed being in the thick of it, but she had said herself it was a young girl’s game, and she would rather retire in a blaze of glory than fade into insignificance. And she did seem to enjoy her new role as a talent scout. Teddy rather thought she liked bossing the new kids on the block around. He asked Al what was new and the kid just shrugged and told some boring story about Scorpius (James rolled his eyes). And Lily constantly cut into every conversation giving her two cents and taking the piss out of everyone else. But was skilfully evasive when asked about her own life – from which Teddy gathered she was as a big of a trouble-maker as her oldest brother, but too clever to get caught anywhere near as much as he did.  
  
It was the exact same thing, every single time he went over there. But it was never dull or boring, because it was home. As Teddy sat back in his chair, pushing away his empty dessert bowl, one hand on his incredibly full stomach, he looked around at his family and smiled lazily. He loved every one of them.  
  
“Teddy” James piped up, suddenly. “I’ve got this defence essay I’m working on. I was wondering if you could help me with it? Would you mind taking a look?”  
  
He was giving Teddy a significant look, but needn’t have bothered. That was the most transparent ‘I need to talk to you privately’ he had ever heard. He couldn’t help but laugh.  
  
“Yeah, sure” he said. “Now?”  
  
James nodded, so they both got up from the table, Teddy thanking Harry and Ginny for the meal, and retreated upstairs to James’s room.  
  
“Defence essay, really?” he said incredulously, closing the door behind him.  
  
“What?” said James, defensively. “Maybe I really DO need help with my essay, YOU don’t know!”  
  
“Jamie, your Dad is head of the Auror office, but you wait for me to come over so you can ask ME for help?” He shook his head, still grinning with amusement. “Seriously, pick a different subject.”  
  
“Well, YOU’RE an Auror aren’t you? It’s not my fault no-one in this family has any other strengths” he protested, jumping onto his bed and sitting with his knees up, leaning against the headboard. Teddy sat down cross legged at the foot of the bed, facing him. They hadn’t sat like this in years. It was strangely nostalgic.  
  
He waited for James to tell him whatever was too scandalous to reveal at the dinner table, but James seemed to be having trouble spitting it out. He kept looking at Teddy and then down at the bed, making weird faces – like he was having an internal struggle of some sort. That wasn’t like him at all.  
  
“What is it?” he asked gently.  
  
“There’s something I need to tell you” James said quietly, very seriously. Teddy leaned forward, his eyes narrowed in concern.  
  
“OK…” he said. There was a long pause.  
  
“I think… I’m gay…” he said slowly.  
  
Teddy leaned back again in surprise. Shit, he wasn’t expecting that.  
  
“You think?” he enquired.  
  
James shook his head, looking annoyed.  
  
“No, fuck, I don’t know why I said that. I know. I’m gay. Yep…”  
  
He looked wide eyed at Teddy, who didn’t know what to say.  
  
“Um, OK” he said awkwardly. “Congratulations?”  
  
“Congratulations?” James repeated, in an outraged tone.  
  
“Well, I dunno” Teddy said defensively. “What do you want me to say?”  
  
“I don’t know” James said, annoyed. “I guess I was expecting more of a reaction that that.”  
  
Teddy shrugged.  
  
“Did you WANT a big reaction?”  
  
“Well, no…” he frowned at Teddy. Teddy could tell he’d been rehearsing this revelation, probably for a while, and it wasn’t going at all how he thought it would.  
  
“I thought you’d be more surprised” James said, finally.  
  
Teddy laughed and shook his head.  
  
“No, I’m not surprised at all.”  
  
“Really?” James was so surprised by this he forgot to be annoyed.  
  
“Well, you know, cocky little shit like you should be a real hit with the ladies” Teddy grinned at him. “But you never seemed to have many around. Except that one girlfriend you had. But you were 15 and you should have been diving all over her every chance you got. But you weren’t.”  
  
“You figured out that I’m gay because I wasn’t all over my 15 year old girlfriend?” James said sceptically.  
  
“Sexual chemistry doesn’t lie bro” Teddy said, leaning back casually. “And you had NONE.”  
  
“Thanks” James said sarcastically, hitting him with a pillow.  
  
Teddy grinned playfully at him again, but James looked worried again.  
  
“You don’t think anyone else figured it out do you?” he asked.  
  
“No, I think your secret is safe” Teddy replied. It then occurred to him that it was indeed a secret, but James was now divulging it to him, for some reason.  
  
“What are you telling ME this?” he asked, slightly confused.  
  
James looked as though he didn’t understand the question.  
  
“Because you’re… you know… you’re gay too… aren’t you?”  
  
His hesitancy was adorable. Teddy had to stifle a laugh.  
  
“What makes you say that?” he asked, raising his eyebrows. He was genuinely curious as to what James was going to say to that.  
  
James started blushing.  
  
“I dunno…” he said quietly. “The hair, the nails, the leather jacket… just your, I dunno, mannerisms… I dunno, it’s hard to say, it’s not really any one thing, I just…”  
  
Teddy laughed out loud this time. In fact, he was bisexual. But he did more often go for men than he did women. He wasn’t exactly out of the closet, but he wasn’t exactly in it either. All of his friends knew, but he hadn’t told his family. He just couldn’t be bothered with the drama. He was sure it would be fine, but there would be all the awkward questions, and all the crying and the hugging. Urgh. He just didn’t want to make a big thing of it. And anyway, he might end up marrying a woman one day, so then there was no reason for them ever to find out, was there?  
  
He reflected though that visually, his aesthetic was pretty queer. He changed his hair colour daily, but it was rarely what you might call a ‘natural’ colour, unless he was undercover on an assignment. And he painted his fingernails to match it. His clothing was generally quite masculine. He had the dragon skin boots, the torn jeans and the casual band t-shirts. He hadn’t thought the leather jacket exactly screamed homo when he bought it, but he caught himself in the mirror once when he was wearing it with a particularly tight white t-shirt and he had to admit, it was pretty fucking gay. He also had a lip ring on one side, numerous piercings around one ear and a scattering of tattoos across his arms and torso.  
  
His grandma and godparents noticed nothing of course, assuming it was just ‘young people fashion’ or something. And anyway, having blue hair doesn’t automatically mean you’re a queer – Teddy had learned that himself the hard way, having tried to pull what turned out to be an extremely straight (and slightly homophobic) guy at a gig once when he was about eighteen.  
  
James was looking worried that he had said something offensive, so Teddy decided to let him off the hook.  
  
“Just an undefinable sense, that you get?” he asked, and James nodded liberally. “It’s called gaydar, Jamie. And yours is functional, if not finely tuned yet. I’m bi, actually. But more homo than hetero so I’ll give you that one I guess.”  
  
James smiled again with obvious relief on his face.  
  
“I knew it” he said, victoriously.  
  
“Yeah well, I’m a living stereotype so don’t feel too proud of yourself kid” Teddy grinned.  
  
James hit him with the pillow again and then got up to go and put some music on the small wireless perched on his desk. Teddy looked at him appraisingly as he did so. When he thought of James the word ‘kid’ generally seemed appropriate. He remembered the mischievous teenager with that glint in his eye. Never taking anything seriously, always looking to cause trouble. But he wasn’t a kid anymore, that was for sure. He was still funny, but he had grown up a hell of a lot. Teddy couldn’t have imagined having this serious a conversation with him two years ago. And he WAS of age now.  
  
“You going out tonight?” James asked, as he tuned into one of the radio stations aimed at a younger crowd, which was playing something you’d expect to hear in a dance club.  
  
“Yeah” Teddy replied, inspiration striking him. “And so are you.”  
  
“What?”  
  
“You’re coming with me. It’s about time I took you out on the town” Teddy replied. He could feel a mischievous smile on his own face. Oh, this was going to be good.  
  
“Are you serious?” James asked, eyeing him suspiciously.  
  
“Yeah, I’m serious. Come on, it’ll be ace. Teddy Lupin and James Potter, out on the prowl. Soho won’t know what’s hit it” Teddy grinned.  
  
James looked torn. Teddy could tell he was excited about the prospect, but James looked guiltily at his desk.  
  
“I’m supposed to be revising for my NEWTS” he said in a pained voice.  
  
“Fuck, you HAVE changed” Teddy said, in surprise. “Am I going to have to twist your arm? Come on, one night off isn’t going to make you fail your NEWTS.”  
  
James grinned again.  
  
“Alright, I’m in” he said excitedly. “But Mum and Dad will KILL you if they find out, you know that right?” he added earnestly.  
  
“Since when has that ever stopped us from doing anything?” Teddy asked.  
  
-  
  
Teddy met up with his friends at the leaky cauldron a couple of hours later and they got a couple of rounds in waiting for James to show up. Eventually he walked in through the back door, having apparated into the beer garden.  
  
He was wearing fairly tight fit black jeans and a button up shirt that practically screamed trying-too-hard. He had fortunately decided not to try and style his hair though. The loose ginger curls sprawling wildly around his eyes were the saving grace of the whole ensemble. Teddy smiled affectionately and got up from the table to greet him over by the door.  
  
“You made it then?” he said.  
  
“Yeah” said James, his eyes darting nervously around the place. “I wasn’t sure what to wear – God that sounds so stupid.”  
  
Teddy ordered them both a firewhisky at the bar and turned back to James, surveying him. James gave him a slightly pleading look. Teddy was suddenly struck by how young he was. He shook his head in amusement. He was going have to help the poor guy out.  
  
“No offence mate, but you look about twelve” he said, pulling his wand out of his pocket. He made a couple of slashing motions and a few rips appeared in James’s jeans. He then undid the top couple of buttons on James’s shirt and told him to roll the sleeves up.  
  
“Better?” James asked, nervously as he did so.  
  
“Better” Teddy nodded, taking a swig of his drink and handing James his. He was pleased with his handiwork. James now looked much more casual. And the rolled up shirt sleeves were quite tight on his bulging biceps, making him look about a thousand times more macho. Damn, those quidditch players arms never get old, he thought. In fact, as he looked James up and down he became aware that he actually looked pretty fit. If Teddy didn’t know him he would certainly be tempted to approach him on the dancefloor.  
  
“What?” James said self-consciously.  
  
“Just wondering when you became so hench” Teddy said. “You’re practically bursting out of your shirt there.”  
  
James looked uncharacteristically bashful, but he responded with his usual cheeky candour.  
  
“Are you checking me out, you perv?”  
  
“Ha, you should be so lucky kid” Teddy replied playfully. “Come on, I’ll introduce you to the gang.”  
  
-  
  
They stood in a long line outside some underground dance club. James was shivering slightly in the cold, examining his new fake ID, that Teddy had made for him.  
  
“So why do I need this again?” he asked.  
  
“Because in the muggle world you can’t drink until you’re 18” Teddy told him.  
  
“How do they know I’m going to drink once I’m in there?”  
  
Teddy laughed.  
  
“Trust me, no-one goes in there and DOESN’T drink.”  
  
“OK…” James didn’t sound convinced. He hopped a little on the spot, trying to stay warm.  
  
“Why aren’t you cold?” he demanded of Teddy.  
  
Teddy laughed again.  
  
“I do this every weekend darling, I’m used to it” he said. “Don’t worry, by the time we leave you’ll be too drunk to notice how cold it is. Muggle alcohol kind of makes you numb”  
  
“Why are going out in the muggle world again?” James asked.  
  
Teddy rolled his eyes.  
  
“Because we’re with a celebrity tonight. Don’t want the paparazzi catching us.”  
  
“A celebrity? What? Who?” James asked, excitedly looking around. Teddy laughed.  
  
“YOU, you idiot!”  
  
“Oh, right” James looked disappointed.  
  
“Can you imagine?” Teddy laughed. “’Harry Potter’s son caught in gay club scandal’”  
  
James laughed.  
  
“Yeah OK, you’ve got a point.”  
  
“They follow me sometimes as well you know, when news is quiet. ‘Trainee Auror, godson of the famous Harry Potter, alleged werewolf…” Teddy laughed. “Seriously, you’d think they’d have better things to do.”  
  
-  
  
Once they were inside the club Teddy’s friends slinked off to the bar, but Teddy hung back by the door with James, letting him take it all in. It was a very popular club, but there was nothing special about it really. Pumping disco music, flashing lights and cheap and disgusting alcohol. The floor was sticky with spilled drinks and the crowd was heaving. The place was absolutely packed, with people having to squeeze past each other on the dancefloor. There was a smoke machine somewhere that kept letting out jets of thick fog every time it got slightly too visible.  
  
James looked around, blinking a lot, getting used to the darkness and the haze. He looked a little disappointed.  
  
“This is it?” he shouted to Teddy over the music.  
  
Teddy laughed.  
  
“Yeah, this is it. What were you expecting?”  
  
“I dunno… It’s just… it’s so… ordinary”  
  
Teddy laughed again.  
  
“You’re clearly not drunk enough” he said, and beckoned James to follow him to the bar.  
  
-  
  
Teddy’s friends took a shine to James, who was on brilliant form and had them all in stitches. They plied him with drinks, partially because that was how they showed affection and also partially to wind Teddy up. Teddy kept surreptitiously switching them out for water, feeling it was his responsibility to make sure James didn’t get alcohol poisoning tonight. But despite his best efforts James was getting pretty hammered. Teddy himself took it easy on the drinks, wanting to keep a clear head so he could keep an eye on James. But James didn’t seem to need it. Once he got his bearings he was in his element, dragging them all out onto the dancefloor, and then back to the bar for shots. Teddy smiled with pride at his little protégé. James’s enthusiasm was infectious and this was turning out to be the best night out they had had in ages. Club nights got a bit samey after a while and he and his mates had been at this for years now. But suddenly they had a newcomer in their midst, who was excited about everything. It made them feel like they were seventeen again themselves.  
  
“To Jamie!” someone shouted, raising their glass.  
  
“To Jamie!” everyone else cried, including James himself, smashing their glasses together, sending splashes of liquid flying everywhere. Teddy laughed.  
  
-  
  
It was approaching the early hours of the morning and the group was starting to splinter off, as everyone went to go and try to pull. Usually Teddy would have done that himself long before now. And he was damn good at it too. It was very rare that he would leave the club alone unless he consciously decided to. He guessed he had picked up some of that classic Weasley charm over the years. And being able to change his appearance at will certainly helped.  
  
But tonight he was babysitting. He was on the dancefloor with Luke, one of his old friends from school, absent-mindedly swaying to the music, sipping his drink. But he was really watching James, on the other side of the club, with one of his other mates, Jim. The two of them were chatting to some tall, muscular guy who Jim was clearly trying to pull. Teddy supposed Jim was making James be his wing man.  
  
“The kid’s done well tonight” Luke shouted to Teddy over the music.  
  
“He has, hasn’t he” Teddy said proudly. “Despite your best efforts to get him shitfaced” he added accusingly.  
  
“He handled his shit well enough didn’t he?” Luke argued. “Besides, don’t think we didn’t notice you slipping him water every 5 minutes. You’re a good big brother” Luke said, ruffling Teddy’s hair and laughing. Teddy slapped his hand away but grinned all the same.  
  
“I think I underestimated him” Teddy conceded. “His wing man skills could use some work though – Jim is clearly striking out over there.” He gestured over to them, and just as Luke turned to look, they both saw the tall guy start kissing James.  
  
Teddy’s mouth fell open in surprise.  
  
“OOOOHHHH!” Luke yelled. “The student surpasses the fucking master!”  
  
Jim caught sight of them and held his hands up, as if to say ‘how great is this?’ as he made his way back over the dancefloor towards them.  
  
“What did you do?!” Teddy demanded as he reached them.  
  
“Nothing!” Jim replied, looking delighted. “Not a fucking thing. Your boy’s got game!”  
  
Teddy shook his head with a mixture of disbelief and admiration. He looked over again at James, who was still necking with the guy, running his hands all over him. He felt a weird twinge of something like protectiveness, and had to resist a wild urge to go over there and punch this guy.  
  
“Don’t worry Teddy, the day had to come eventually” Luke grinned, patting him on the shoulder. “You can’t be top dog forever.”  
  
“Ladies and gentlemen, we have a new sheriff in town!” yelled Jim, clinking glasses with Luke, looking mischievously at Teddy for a reaction.  
  
“Fuck off both of you” Teddy replied, making a swatting gesture. “You bitches know I could leave with anyone in here if I wanted. I’ve just been watching HIM all night, haven’t I?”  
  
“Looks like he doesn’t need your help, Teddy boy” said Jim.  
  
“Guess you just can’t compete with the youth of today” Luke added, grinning.  
  
Teddy ignored them, still watching James. The tall guy was now holding him close, around the waist, and whispering something in his ear. Judging by James’s expression, Teddy knew exactly what the guy was saying to him.  
  
“Oh to be seventeen again and have your pick of any guy in the club…” Jim was saying.  
  
“To have your first filthy bathroom shag…” Luke added.  
  
“That’s enough!” Teddy shouted. He started striding towards James, determined to put a stop to this madness. Only vaguely aware that he was being a complete hypocrite – it wasn’t as if he’d never been up to no good in this very club. But that was his little brother!  
  
He had only gotten halfway across the room however when he saw James shake his head and wriggle free. James then started making his way back over to Jim and Luke on dancefloor, not spotting Teddy in the crowd. Teddy breathed out a sigh of relief. Thank god for that. He did NOT want to get thrown out of the club for smashing some guy’s face in.  
  
He fought his way back through the crowd to re-join the others. Jim and Luke were in a fit of laughter, and laughed even more as Teddy approached.  
  
“You better watch it” Jim said to James. “Teddy was just about to go full big brother on your ass!”  
  
James raised an eyebrow at Teddy, who disregarded him.  
  
“I’m not about to let some fucking troll take advantage of him, not on my watch” he said defensively to Jim and Luke.  
  
“A troll now is he?” laughed Jim.  
  
“Come off it Teddy, you’ve left this place with a million guys who all looked exactly like that” Luke insisted.  
  
“I have fucking not!” Teddy said, outraged. “And can I remind you that he’s only seventeen! Set a fucking example, would you?” He added irritably. Luke and Jim both continued to smirk at him. They were having the time of their lives winding him up.  
  
“Luke, do you recall how old we were the first time we came here?” Jim asked loudly, clearly addressing the whole group.  
  
“Hmmm, I don’t recall. You mean that time that Teddy got off with 3 guys in the same night?” Luke replied, grinning.  
  
“And disappeared for half an hour into the bathroom with one of them?”  
  
“Shut the fuck up!” Teddy yelled, putting his hands over James’s ears. “He doesn’t need to hear this!” James fought him off, grinning ear to ear.  
  
“Why I believe we were SIXTEEN, were we not?”  
  
“Teddy, how could you?!” James cried in mock outrage.  
  
“Oh don’t you fucking start” Teddy shouted at him, but he was unable to help himself mirroring the grin on James’s face. Alright, maybe Luke and Jim had a point. Maybe the kid was actually a smidgeon MORE responsible than Teddy himself had been at that age. And maybe Teddy WAS being a bit overly protective.  
  
“Come on” Teddy announced, pushing Jim and Luke by the smalls of their backs in the direction of the door. “Let’s get the fuck out of here, before I deck one of you.”  
  
“Oh you can try, honey” Luke smiled at him. Jim and James laughed, but they all allowed themselves to be shooed off the dancefloor. The bar had stopped serving half an hour ago. It was time to call it a night.  
  
Teddy took James into a headlock as they shuffled their way through the much thinner crowd by the door.  
  
“And don’t you dare think this means I won’t beat YOUR arse, if you talk to me like that” he said to James, who was laughing and wriggled free. He put an arm around Teddy’s waist as they reached the stairs. Behind them, Luke and Jim were also arm in arm and had started half-singing-half-chanting: “He can’t take a joke… He can’t take a joke…”  
  
“Oh no, the illusion has been shattered” James said playfully. “You no longer have any authority over me.”  
  
“Yeah, like I ever fucking did” Teddy laughed.  
  
“Hey” James said seriously, once they were out in the open air. “I did good tonight, right?”  
  
“Yeah, you did good” Teddy smiled, ruffling his hair. “I MIGHT even let you come out with me again.”  
  
James laughed, and the two of them stumbled vaguely in the direction of a kebab shop over the road.  
  
Teddy smiled affectionately at James as they went. In spite of the fact he had barely drunk anything and he had constantly worried about James, that really was the best night out he had had in ages. They were definitely going to do this again.  
  
“You know Jamie, I think we’re starting a new chapter in our friendship here” Teddy said to him.  
  
“Oh yeah? The one where you take me out and get me drunk and let trolls take advantage of me?” James grinned, looking sideways at him.  
  
“The one where I’m not above giving you a dead leg for disrespecting me” Teddy said, punching James in the thigh. James cried out and started limping a little, but they were both laughing their heads off.  
  
“I think you’re right Teddy” James said. “New chapter. And it’s going to be a fucking good one.”


	2. Tonight Teddy, is a very important night

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A bit of a jump forward in time here, because this story is very much about James/Teddy so let's get to the point (and as fun as some filler about their drunken escapades would be, this story is already long enough).

James burst out of Teddy’s fireplace entirely unannounced, chattering excitedly.  
  
“Tonight Teddy, is a very important night. A momentous occasion, you might say. Or at the very least, an anniversary of a momentous occasion. History was made on this night. Worlds were shattered. Lives were changed. Drinks were drunk. Strangers were groped. And you Teddy. Well, you had the piss ripped out of you.”  
  
Teddy looked at him incredulously. He was slouched on the sofa, beer in hand and had been watching his muggle TV (which had turned to static when James had flooed in). He hadn’t moved at all during James’s speech, but now James was looking at him expectantly, a rather self-impressed look on his face.  
  
“You gonna tell me what the fuck you’re on about?” Teddy said in amusement, sitting forward and putting his beer on the table.  
  
“Come on, don’t you remember?” James said.  
  
“Well, my clues are ‘drinks were drunk’ and ‘strangers were groped.’” Teddy laughed. “You’re going to have to narrow it down more than that.”  
  
“Oh Teddy, do I mean nothing to you?” James cried dramatically. Teddy laughed again. “It’s our anniversary! This night, three years ago, you took me out for the very first time.”  
  
“And I’ve been regretting it ever since” Teddy smiled, getting up to go and get James a beer from the fridge. Although judging by how much he was bouncing around he had already had a few drinks before coming over.  
  
“Oh Teddy, don’t play hard to get” James said playfully. “So, are we celebrating or what?”  
  
Teddy turned around and threw James a can of beer grinning.  
  
“What, on a school night?”  
  
“Yeah, why not?”  
  
“Because, we’re not all bloody layabouts like you. _I_ have a job!”  
  
“Oh come on old man, don’t tell me you’ve lost your stamina already” James goaded him.  
  
“My stamina is FINE thank you very much!”  
  
Teddy slumped back down onto the couch. This was a lie - Teddy was very much losing his stamina. He knew that 26 wasn’t old, but he definitely couldn’t stay out drinking all night and bounce back the next day like he could when he was twenty.  
  
“I can’t go into the office on three hours sleep with a hangover. I work for YOUR Dad, remember?” he added.  
  
“Exactly!” James countered, dismissively. “Dad doesn’t notice shit, you’ll be fine!”  
  
James knelt down in front of Teddy, holding his hands and looking earnestly at him.  
  
“Come on Teddy, YOU got me into this lifestyle. This is YOUR responsibility.” He was looking at Teddy very seriously, which was so ridiculous that Teddy cracked up.  
  
He couldn’t pretend he wasn’t tempted. Something about James just gave Teddy this youthful energy that made him want to be reckless and crazy. And they did have a good time when they went out together. And they hadn’t been out in AGES.  
  
“Ooooh, you’re considering it” James said excitedly. Teddy pushed him over sideways.  
  
“I haven’t said yes yet” he said irritably, but smiling in spite of himself.  
  
James got up off the floor and sat next to him on the sofa.  
  
“Yeah but you’re considering it. That’s half the battle.”  
  
“You really are a cocky bastard, you know that?” Teddy said, pulling a cigarette out of the packet on the coffee table and lighting it with his wand, more to annoy James than because he really wanted one. He blew the smoke out directly at James’s face and James wafted it away from himself with his hands.  
  
“I thought you liked that about me” he said, flashing Teddy a dazzling smile.  
  
Teddy suppressed a smile. God help him, he did.  
  
“Oh fucking hell, alright” he said begrudgingly, but unable to stop the grin on his face.  
  
“Yesss!” James exclaimed. “Teddy’s on BOARRRDDD” he yelled, getting up and skipping into Teddy’s bedroom.  
  
“Hey!” Teddy called after him, getting up and following.  
  
When he got there James was stood rummaging through his wardrobe.  
  
“I think you should wear the blue tonight” he said, pulling a deep blue shirt out.  
  
“Fucking hell, do I get ANY say in anything that’s happening tonight?” Teddy said, shaking his head.  
  
“Of course you do” James smiled. “But you look sexy in the blue.”  
  
Teddy changed his hair and finger nails from green to blue obligingly, but he looked at James sternly.  
  
“Hey, if it’s just you and me, we are NOT out on the pull OK? You are NOT dragging me out just to ditch me and go home with someone else.”  
  
“Would I do that? On our anniversary?” James said, being fake-serious again and Teddy couldn’t help but laugh.  
  
“I’m serious, don’t you fucking dare!”  
  
James walked over to him and put a hand on his shoulder.  
“The only person I’m going home with tonight is _you_ ” he said in a low voice with just the right amount of flirtatiousness, and that tell-tale glint in his eye.  
  
Teddy stared him down completely deadpan. But as James walked away back over to the wardrobe he felt a slight shiver go down his spine. Damn it, that was sexy.  
  
He knew James did these things just to mess with him. And he did them back, just to mess with James. And they had been doing it for so long he had no idea who had started it (probably you, a wry voice in his head said). But lately…  
  
Teddy didn’t know what to make of it. James was fit. There was no getting around that. Teddy surveyed him now, in his jeans that were tight around the arse but slightly relaxed everywhere else. And a t-shirt that was just about the right size, but nevertheless strained over his chest and at his biceps - James was currently playing semi-professional quidditch for a living and it was making him ridiculously muscular. His bright red hair hung in soft curls around his face. There was a scattering of freckles across the bridge of his nose and the top of his cheeks that gave him a youthful, mischievous look. But when he fixed you with THAT look with those deep brown eyes of his. Well, that would make just about anyone come undone. And it regularly did, to the guys in the club that James always pulled, every damn time they went out.  
  
Yes, James definitely didn’t fit into the ‘little brother’ category anymore. He was a man now. A fucking gorgeous man. But he was still Teddy’s best mate, and it still seemed fundamentally wrong somehow to think of him in a sexual context. Not that that stopped Teddy from doing so. He just couldn’t help himself sometimes. But he knew nothing was ever going to happen there. It was Jamie.  
  
-  
  
James had insisted on going back to the club that they had gone to on that first night. Some underground muggle gay club in Soho that Teddy had spent much of his formative years in.  
  
When they got inside Teddy looked around and shook his head. Everyone in there was so bloody young! He supposed it didn’t help that it was a Tuesday night – the only people in here were probably students. But it made him feel ancient. He wasn’t so sure this was a good idea after all.  
  
“Fucking hell Jamie it’s dead in here, let’s go somewhere else” he shouted over the music. He wasn’t wrong. The dancefloor was just about full enough to make it not a total write-off, but it certainly wasn’t packed.  
  
“It’s gonna be like this everywhere on a Tuesday” James shrugged and made his way to the bar. Teddy sighed and followed him. Well, in that case he was going to have to get hammered enough to enjoy a shit night out.  
  
They did three rounds of shots and then each got a beer to walk around with.  
  
They stopped at the edge of the dancefloor and Teddy started looking around.  
  
“So what do you reckon?” he asked James.  
  
“You said we weren’t out on the pull!” James protested.  
  
“Just window shopping” Teddy replied, grinning.  
  
They did this often. One fateful night a couple of years ago they had both gone after the same guy, with disastrous results. James had snogged him first. Later, not having seen this, so did Teddy. So a drunk and defensive Luke had punched Teddy. For which James had punched Luke. Then the guy they had both got off with punched James, thinking he was the one who had decked Teddy. Keen to avoid a repeat incident, the two of them now took stock at the start of the night and marked out their territory.  
  
“Well…” James said, looking unimpressed as he looked around. “I don’t see anyone in here as fit as you.”  
  
“Well that’s not saying much, I mean, who is?” replied Teddy.  
  
James gave him a wry smile.  
  
“I suppose I’ll take the guy in the middle over there – with the red shirt.”  
  
“Hmmm, respectable choice. But I’m looking at the girl over there in the green dress.”  
  
“Oh right, I forgot, you have a much larger pool to choose from” James said.  
  
“Yeah, she is in a gay club though, so she’s probably gay” Teddy mused. “Second choice would be the blonde guy with her.”  
  
James nodded appreciatively.  
  
“Hey, are we sexual predators?” he asked Teddy, quite casually.  
  
“Oh yeah, for sure” Teddy said. “Don’t you blame me for that though, I tried to steer you away from that life.”  
  
James laughed.  
  
“Well you did a terrible job” he said. “I’ve completely forgotten what we do on a night out when we’re not on the pull.”  
  
“I think we just drink” Teddy suggested.  
  
So they went back to the bar to do some more shots.  
  
They then went to dance for a bit, which was OK enough. But without the whole gang there it got boring pretty fast. They kept it up for about half an hour but eventually Teddy wanted to go outside for a cigarette, so he beckoned James to follow him.  
  
“Damn it, we used to have such a laugh in here” James said when they were outside. “Why is this shit?”  
  
Teddy laughed.  
  
“Because it’s a fucking Tuesday night and there’s no-one else here” he said.  
  
“We used to go out just the two of us all the time and we still had a laugh” James said frowning. That was true. But they hadn’t done it in a long time. Teddy was increasingly spending his weekends alone at home, exhausted after a hard week at work.  
  
“I’m an old man now Jamie” Teddy told him, taking a deep inhale from his cigarette. “You said it yourself.”  
  
James laughed.  
  
“Come on Teddy, I was just winding you up. You know that’s not true.”  
  
Teddy pursed his lips, thinking.  
  
“I know it’s not” he agreed. “But… there’s kind of some truth in it, don’t you think? Maybe this just isn’t my scene anymore…”  
  
“Right, fuck this” James said, looking annoyed and taking Teddy’s cigarette from him and dropping it on the floor. “We are going back in there and we are going to get completely smashed and we are going to pretend we’re seventeen again and have a great fucking night! OK?”  
  
“Why is this so important to you?” Teddy asked, bewildered.  
  
“Because, you’re NOT too old Teddy. You’re just NOT OK? And you’re not fucking bailing on me” James dragged Teddy back inside and they did another 2 rounds of shots. Teddy was feeling pretty drunk now. Drunk enough to completely lose his inhibitions on the dancefloor and dance to the shit music they were playing like he was the star of a music video. James was doing the same and Teddy was losing his head laughing, because James looked like such an idiot, but the look on his face suggested he thought he was coolest guy in there. And Teddy knew he himself was doing exactly the same. But he didn’t care because he was drunk and this was HIS club damn it. And tonight, he was a fucking star.  
  
-

After what felt like hours of dancing, Teddy felt himself starting to sober up. He was feeling dehydrated, so he dragged James to the bar to get them both some water.  
  
“Feeling young again, yet?” James asked.  
  
“Oh yeah” Teddy grinned. “But I’m now going to drink 2 pints of water, so that my hangover is very slightly less painful tomorrow.”  
  
James rolled his eyes.  
  
“Are you having a good time though?” he asked, looking mildly worried.  
  
“Yeah I guess” Teddy replied, downing water. James continued to look less than happy. “What is with you tonight?” Teddy asked.  
  
James paused.  
  
“Promise me you won’t stop coming out” James said, looking at him with sad eyes.  
  
“What?”  
  
“We NEVER do this anymore and I… it just isn’t fun without you. Promise me that we can still do this sometimes.”  
  
“THAT’S what this is about?”  
  
James nodded.  
  
Teddy took him by the hand and led him outside, where it was much quieter.  
  
“Jamie, I’ve just been busy with work stuff. It’s not that I don’t want to hang out with you. I’m just really fucking tired a lot of the time. But of course I still have fun with you” he said earnestly, looking James in the eye, still holding his hand. James gave him a weak smile.  
  
“But to be totally honest… I HAVE outgrown these shitty student clubs a bit” Teddy added. James laughed.  
  
“That’s not an age thing, fuck, I have too. It was SHIT in there.”  
  
He said this a little too loudly and the bouncer stood behind them said ‘Hey!’  
  
“OK, time to go” Teddy grinned, and pulled James down a nearby alleyway so they could disapparate out of there.  
  
When they arrived back in Teddy’s flat Teddy realised that they were still holding hands, and dropped James’s abruptly. His head was still spinning a little from the alcohol and he was way too wired to sleep.  
  
“You staying over?” He asked James.  
  
“Well, I did say I was coming home with you didn’t I?” he smirked. Teddy smiled back, glad they seemed to be back to normal.  
  
“Yeah, want to watch some TV before we turn in?”


	3. Am I gay enough for you?

Teddy couldn’t get what James had said out of his head for the rest of the week. Had he really let his social life slide that much? Apparently it was enough for James to be concerned about him. He racked his brains to try and remember the last proper night out he had with the boys and the only thing that came to him was new year’s. Shit, they must have been out since then, right? It couldn’t possibly have been that long…  
  
He sighed and rubbed his eyes wearily. It wasn’t a conscious decision that he had made, to stop going out and seeing his friends. But he had drank so much at new year’s that he didn’t even want to look at a bottle of firewhisky again for a long time. And then they had had a really big case on at work and he was working long hours and lots of overtime. So he was just too exhausted when the boys owled him asking if he was coming out at the weekend. Work wasn’t quite so crazy now, but he was still working the long hours. Finding himself staying later and later at the office. And there was no real reason for it. He guessed it was just either that, or go back home to an empty flat and watch shit TV by himself.  
  
Fuck, he thought, am I lonely? God that’s pathetic.  
  
He looked around his office and it showed obvious signs of someone who is over-worked. The walls were coated with several layers of crap – pictures of suspects and crime scenes, maps, flow charts, notes about cases. There was just barely any order and coherence to it – there was still shit hung up there from cases he had closed out weeks ago. Random drawers were left open in his filing cabinets, the contents spilling out. The space in front of him on the desk was clear, but only because he had carelessly swept everything to the side to give himself some working space. There were messy stacks of files and odd bits of paper littering not only his desk but also the floor around it. But the most obvious indicator that he was working too hard was the fact that the clock on the wall read 8pm.  
  
“Fuck” he said aloud.  
  
“Teddy, is that you?” a surprised voice said from the hallway. His line manager Steve poked his head around the door.  
  
“What are you still doing here?” he asked, looking surprised.  
  
“Steve, do I work too hard?” Teddy asked, slumping back in his chair.  
  
“Yes, without a shadow of doubt you do” Steve replied looking amused. “Wish I had ten more like you. But you’re going to be no use to anyone if you run yourself into the ground.”  
  
“I can handle it” Teddy said defensively.  
  
“I don’t doubt you can, but that doesn’t mean you should” Steve replied, looking stern. “It’s Friday night, go home, boy! You’re twenty-five, go and bloody get drunk with your friends!”  
  
“I’m twenty-six” Teddy replied, smiling.  
  
“Go home” Steve repeated firmly, and left.  
  
Teddy smiled, as a plan started to formulate in his mind.

-  
  
First stop, Jamie. He was going to be the easiest recruit by far. And it was easier to get others on board once you had the first.  
  
He flooed to the Potters’ house straight from the office. James was in his room – and Teddy burst through the door without knocking.  
  
“Tonight Jamie is a momentous occasion” he cried, laughing as James jumped out of his skin. “History will be made tonight. Drinks will be drunk. Strangers will be groped. Youth, will be recaptured. And YOU, will stop calling me a fucking old man. Because tonight Jamie, we are going out. And we are fucking doing it right this time.”  
  
James broke out into a grin.  
  
“Wow, I really got to you huh?” he said smirking.  
  
“You MAY have had a point about me needing to get off my arse, MAYBE” Teddy said, now striding over to James’s wardrobe and rummaging through. He pulled out a small black t-shirt and threw it at James, who was sitting at his desk. “Wear this, I want you to look hot tonight” he added, winking at James who laughed.  
  
“This” he said, holding up the t-shirt “makes me look like George Michael.”  
  
“You say that like it’s a bad thing.”  
  
James laughed again, pulling off the t-shirt he was wearing (Teddy felt the slightest flutter as he did so) and pulling on the black t-shirt, with difficulty. It was straining over his chest, which Teddy swore was now even broader than it ever had been. Fuck, Jamie, he thought, quidditch really does agree with you.  
  
James stood up and did a few model-style poses.  
  
“Am I gay enough for you?” he asked. Teddy laughed.  
  
“Oh yeah, you’ll do just fine” he said seductively. James blushed ever so slightly and Teddy laughed again.  
  
“Come on – we’re going to get Luke” he said, opening the door and beckoning for James to follow.

-

Teddy went first, flooing straight into Luke’s apartment without forewarning. Luke jumped up from the sofa in surprise, and then jumped slightly again, swearing loudly, as James appeared behind Teddy.  
  
“Fuck, ever heard of knocking?” he demanded, but Teddy knew he wasn’t really angry.  
  
“Get dressed honey” he said, disregarding the question. “We’re going out.”  
  
Luke grinned for a second, but then adopted a fake-annoyed persona.  
  
“Oh NOW we’re going out. NOW we’re going out. Because YOU say so? Never mind the millions of times we invited you out and you were ‘too busy with work’…”  
  
“Yes, how ever did you get by without me” Teddy said, grinning. “But don’t worry, I’m here to grace you fucking mortals with my presence again. And we’re going to have a fucking night to remember.”  
  
“Or not, as the case may be” James added, holding up a bottle of firewhisky.  
  
Luke grinned again and hurriedly fetched three shotglasses from the kitchen.

-  
  
They made five more stops, and managed to convince three more people to come with them. Teddy reckoned that wasn’t too bad going – he guessed he hadn’t entirely lost his touch.  
  
He took them to a wizarding bar that he had been to once on a night out with his colleagues. It was filled with young professionals in the mid-twenties to late-thirties age bracket. It didn’t have quite the same energy as the dance clubs, but there was a good buzz nonetheless. There was a live band playing some popular music and quite a few people dancing. Everyone looked appreciatively around as they entered, including James.  
  
“So, this is your scene now, is it?” he asked, playfully.  
  
“Well, we can’t all be getting hand jobs in disgusting club toilets for the rest of our lives” Teddy replied, looking sideways at him.  
  
“No, we’re at the stage in our lives now where we get hand jobs in slightly cleaner club toilets” James winked at him and then sauntered off to the bar. Teddy watched him go, smiling.  
  
“WHAT is with the chemistry between you and the kid?” Luke asked, once James was out of earshot.  
  
“He’s not a kid anymore” Teddy replied, choosing to ignore the rest of the question.  
  
“Oh I know that” Luke said, eyeing James who was casually leant up against the bar. Teddy frowned at him. “And so do you, by the looks of it.” Luke added.  
  
“I don’t know what you’re talking about” he lied.  
  
Luke merely gave him a knowing look, and walked over towards the bar himself. Teddy frowned again and followed.

-

James bought Teddy and drink and the two of them took a good vantage point by the side of the dance floor and started scouting out the crowd, as they always did.  
  
“See anything you like?” James asked Teddy.  
  
“Hmmm, not yet” Teddy said. Truthfully he wasn’t really looking. Today had been a bit of a weird day and he wasn’t really feeling at the top of his game.  
  
“No me neither” James said. “There’s no-one in here as sexy as you.” That old joke again.  
  
“Hey, why is Luke being weird?” James asked, nodding towards Luke, who was indeed watching them in a mildly amused sort of way.  
  
Teddy paused, unsure what to tell him. After a moment he decided to opt for the truth.  
  
“Oh he thinks I want to fuck you.” Teddy knew his bluntness would get a good reaction from James and he wasn’t disappointed. He spat out his drink.  
  
Teddy laughed, but James recovered quickly.  
  
“Well I mean, that’s not exactly news is it?” James said, in a low and seductive voice. “You’ve been trying to get me into bed for years.”  
  
Teddy looked at him, about to make a sarcastic comeback, but he was caught unawares by the intensity of James’s expression. James was looking him in the eye with that naughty glint that made Teddy’s mouth go dry. He smiled mischievously at Teddy’s lack of response and Teddy felt his breathing start to go heavy. What the hell was Jamie doing? He had to know what he was doing, right? The effect it was having? James looked Teddy up and down almost obscenely and it suddenly occurred to Teddy that James was messing with him. Toying with him, just for fun.  
  
Well, he thought, with a flare of annoyance, two can play at that game.  
  
He took a small step towards James, closing the distance between them so that their chests were just about touching and their faces were inches from each other. The effect was immediate. James lost his cocky demeanour entirely and just looked up at Teddy’s face, his lips slightly parted, looking hungrily at him.  
  
“Honey, if I wanted you in my bed” Teddy said softly, leaning in just a little further so that their lips were almost touching. “You’d already be there” he whispered. Then he turned and walked away, towards the bathroom. He didn’t actually need to go, but he could feel James’s eyes on him, watching him walk away, and knew that it would be driving him crazy. He laughed a little at the thought as he went.

-

When Teddy emerged from the bathroom James was talking to a random guy over by the dancefloor, so Teddy joined Luke and the others over by the bar.  
  
“Still pretending there’s nothing going on?” Luke asked him as he approached.  
  
“There IS nothing going on” Teddy insisted. “I’m trapped in the weirdest fucking game of chicken I’ve ever played in my life… But I think I’m winning” he shrugged.  
  
“You fancy him, right?” Luke asked, earnestly.  
  
“Have you seen him?” Teddy said incredulously. “He’s the fucking hottest guy in here. Who DOESN’T fancy him?”  
  
“Well, he obviously fancies you” Luke replied. “So why aren’t you taking him back to your place, like, right fucking now?”  
  
“Because… I can’t do that… he’s family.”  
  
“Teddy boy, I have SEEN the way you look at him and I’m not buying for a second that you think of him as family.”  
  
“He’s family in the sense that he’s a permanent fixture in my life” Teddy snapped. “He’s my best mate.”  
  
“I’m hurt” said Luke, grinning.  
  
Teddy sighed in frustration. These bastards never took anything seriously.  
  
“Look, I’m not going to fuck things up. He’s practically family. His dad is my godfather. AND I work for his dad. AND he’s too young for me anyway.”  
  
“That sounds like a pretty well-rehearsed list” Luke said, smiling. “Who are you trying to convince Teddy, me or yourself?”  
  
“Fucker” Teddy muttered, and shuffled off towards the direction of the beer garden to have a cigarette. He was waylaid en route however, by James.  
  
“Hey, Teddy where are you going?”  
  
“To smoke” Teddy said, holding up the cigarette in his hand. “Struck out, did you?” Teddy asked him, cursing himself for the unintentional flirtatious notes in his tone. He was quickly running out of headspace to deal with this. Tonight was supposed to be fun.  
  
“Nah, I wasn’t really trying. I’ve only got eyes for you tonight” James replied, giving him that look again. Teddy sighed in frustration and stepped towards him so they were stood far too close again.  
  
“You’re playing with fire” he said quietly.  
  
“You gonna burn me, Teddy?” James asked. Teddy’s advancing on him hadn’t had the same effect as the first time. He was holding his ground now, staring Teddy down with that piercing, consuming gaze. He even leaned forward ever so slightly, so now their chests were pressed together.  
  
“If you’re not careful” Teddy replied. God, what the fuck were they doing?  
  
“Maybe I don’t want to be careful” James said, smiling.  
  
“Then maybe you’ll find out what happens when I’m not… in _control_ of myself” Teddy said softly. That did it. James let out a small gasp and gently put one hand on Teddy’s arm, running it slowly up his bicep. James looked at Teddy’s lips and Teddy came to his senses. He needed to get the fuck out of there.  
  
For the second time he abruptly turned and walked away, leaving James behind him breathless and speechless.

-

He made it outside and finally lit his cigarette, taking a long inhale and then exhaling slowly as he leaned backwards against the wall, looking up at the night sky.  
  
Fuck, this was a right mess. What the hell was James playing at? What the hell was Teddy playing at? He should know better than to get mixed up in these mind games.  
  
Luke came outside and walked over to Teddy, lighting a cigarette of his own as he did so.  
  
“Why’d you bail?” he asked. “That was just getting good.”  
  
“I told you mate, I’m not doing it. It isn’t happening.”  
  
“I don’t know that you’ve got a choice in the matter” Luke replied, matter-of-factly. “The kid’s determined.”  
  
“Stop calling him ‘the kid’ would you, you’re creeping me out” Teddy bristled.  
  
“Sorry” Luke said, sincerely. “Old habits…”  
  
They both just smoked their cigarettes for a while in silence. Teddy’s head was spinning. Maybe Luke was right, James didn’t seem to be taking no for an answer. Teddy was toying with the idea of slipping out and just going home. But James would probably just follow him there. He was supposed to be crashing on his couch tonight after all.  
  
“I tell you what though, I underestimated you” Luke said, finally, interrupting Teddy’s train of thought. “It must have taken serious willpower to turn him down twice.”  
  
Teddy merely shrugged. Truthfully he was absolutely terrified about what might have happened if he hadn’t backed away. He wasn’t sure that he had done so because it was the right thing to do. He had done it because he was scared.  
  
“I mean” Luke continued “if you’re not going to take a shot, then maybe I will. Because that is one hot piece of ass in there…”  
  
Teddy felt a wave of rage rush through him.  
  
“Don’t even fucking joke about it, man” he snarled.  
  
“Jeez, OK” Luke said, surprised by the intensity of Teddy’s reaction.  
  
There was another long pause.  
  
“I just…” Luke started, looking pained. He shook his head. “I get the stuff about the dad and the family thing and all that but I just don’t… explain it to me one more time. WHY can you not just take him home and shag him senseless tonight?”  
  
“BECAUSE” Teddy said, flaring up again. “I CAN’T… just… shag him…” his voice faltered as he reached the end of the sentence and realised what he was admitting.  
  
Luke raised him eyebrows in surprise.  
  
“Oh my” he said, downing the rest of his drink, holding onto the wall for stability. “Can it be? Teddy Lupin, bachelor supreme is hanging up his arseless chaps? Retiring from the game? Are you… looking for a _relationship_?”  
  
Teddy gave him a dirty look for being so flippant about it, but Luke gave him a genuine smile and Teddy knew that even though he was being a bit of an arse he really did care.  
  
“I don’t know” Teddy said quietly. “I just… I can’t be arsed with this one-night-stand bullshit anymore, you know? It’s not…”  
  
“Fullfilling?” Luke supplied.  
  
Teddy sighed, sinking down the wall to sit on the floor.  
  
“It’d just be nice to wake up to the same face two weekends in a row, you know?” he said.  
  
Luke sat down next to him and patted his knee reassuringly.  
  
“And besides that” Teddy said. “It’s Jamie. It would HAVE to be more, with him.”  
  
“You fucking LOVE him” Luke said, surprised by this revelation. Teddy said nothing.  
  
“Shit man, I’m sorry” said Luke, genuinely. “I really thought we were just talking about a shag…”  
  
Teddy continued to say nothing. He looked down at the ground in front of him. It seemed like a lifetime ago he had burst into Luke’s flat with grand ideas about a wild night out. How the fuck had they ended up here?  
  
“What are you going to do?” Luke asked gently.  
  
“I dunno mate” Teddy replied, not looking up.

-

Luke went back inside shortly after their conversation, but Teddy stayed outside having another cigarette, pacing up and down the terrace. He knew he was going to have to speak to James again at some point, but he needed to get his head together first. Unfortunately, before he really had chance to, James found him.  
  
“You running away from me Teddy?” James asked. There was hint of flirtatiousness in his voice, but there was also genuine concern on his face. Teddy sighed.  
  
“Yes” Teddy said, not looking at him. “Yes I am…”  
  
“Getting a little too hot for you to handle?” James asked mischievously and Teddy shook his head. He was NOT going to get sucked into this again.  
  
“Yep” he said, looking up at James, doing his very best to keep his expression neutral. “You got me. You are the superior pick up artist, I just can’t compete with those skills. You win.”  
  
“Is that what you think I was doing?” James asked with genuine confusion, no longer flirty. Teddy shrugged.  
  
“And that’s bullshit, by the way” James added.  
  
“What?” Teddy asked, confused.  
  
“I’m calling bullshit. No way am I the superior pick-up artist. I’ve SEEN you Teddy. Why won’t you play the game?”  
  
“It’s a game to you, is it?”  
  
James paused and the two of them frowned at each other. James was studying Teddy, evidently trying to figure out what he was thinking.  
  
“You know that you can make me come undone any time you want” James said softly, taking a step towards Teddy, closing the distance between them for the third time that night. Teddy wanted to take a step back but his stupid pride made him hold his ground. But James was uncomfortably close. It was getting Teddy hot and bothered again. He wished he was anywhere but here right now.  
  
“You already have, twice, tonight” James went on. “And don’t tell me you didn’t fucking enjoy it.”  
  
Teddy had nothing to say to that, so he continued to stare James down, keeping his expression unreadable.  
  
“So why are you letting me win?” James asked, his face right up against Teddy’s, their lips almost touching, his voice almost a whisper. The fucker was using Teddy’s own move against him. He couldn’t stand it anymore.  
  
He grabbed hold of James’s wrists and pushed him up against the nearby wall, pinning his arms above his head. He pressed his body into James’s, who let out a quiet, thrilled moan.  
  
“I don’t want to play anymore” Teddy growled.  
  
James stared back at him with an expression that Teddy had never seen there before. It was pure longing. It was lust and desire and a tiny little bit of pleading. And it quite plainly said ‘I want you to take me here and now.’ That look would be Teddy’s undoing. Teddy became aware that they were both breathing very fast. He was having an internal struggle between releasing James and walking away again, or just finally fucking kissing him, like they both wanted him to. The way that James was looking at him made the former seem entirely impossible this time. Before Teddy had chance to really get his head around the gravity of the situation, James made the first move and planted his lips on Teddy’s.  
  
If Teddy had had any control of his faculties before he certainly didn’t anymore. As James’s lips touched his it felt like a wave of fire was sweeping through him. He released James’s arms and snaked his hands round James’s waist, pulling him closer by the small of his back. He was kissing James furiously. Like he had wanted to for such a long fucking time. Like his life depended on it. And James was responding in kind, throwing his arms around Teddy’s neck and pressing himself into Teddy and OH GOD it was just too much.  
  
Teddy fumbled in his pocket for his wand and without breaking the kiss he apparated the pair of them back to his apartment.  
  
They landed next to the bed, and Teddy pushed James roughly onto it, barely having a second to register the hungry look on James’s face before diving on top of him to kiss him again.


	4. You don’t get to say my fucking name like that

Teddy woke up to the sound of his bedroom door creaking open. He sat up, rubbing his eyes, to see James, fully dressed, one hand on the door, looking extremely awkward.  
  
A wave of horrible disappointment broke over him.  
  
“Sneaking out?” he asked, darkly.  
  
“No, I…” James bit his lower lip nervously. He obviously couldn’t think of an excuse, so he just stood there looking at Teddy in a pained sort of way. Teddy glowered back.  
  
“I’m sorry Teddy” James said earnestly. “It’s just… fuck, this is awkward, right? I thought it’d be better if I just…”  
  
“No, I get it” Teddy said coldly, lying back down, not looking at him. “No need to prolong it. Just go.”  
  
“Teddy…”  
  
“Don’t…”  
  
“ _Teddy…_ “  
  
“No!” He sat up again, furiously. “You don’t get to say my fucking name like that. Not after I catch you fucking walking out of here like… like…”  
  
Like it meant nothing. He couldn’t even say it.  
  
James looked like he was about to cry.  
  
“See, this is exactly what I DIDN’T want!” he wrung his hands in frustration. “I didn’t want things to get all messed up, because you’re my best mate and you’re too fucking important to me for that.”  
  
That rubbed Teddy up the wrong way. This was the exact same reason why he had fought so hard against this last night. And yet, here they were.  
  
“Maybe you should have thought about that before you started fucking making eyes at me in the bar” Teddy spat.  
  
“You wanted it just as much as I did” James said defensively, his eyes starting to narrow as nervousness was replaced by anger. “Don’t you fucking pretend you didn’t!”  
  
Teddy shook his head.  
  
“Whether I wanted it or not isn’t the point, you’re the one who fucking instigated it, apparently without thinking it through at all!”  
  
“BullSHIT” James yelled, standing up again. “YOU came bursting into my room. ‘Jamie, we’re going out, wear this, you look sexy’ and then started fucking undressing me with your eyes, don’t think I didn’t notice that shit! And then in the pub – ‘Luke thinks I want to fuck you’… YOU started this, not me!”  
  
Teddy was still angry, but these words actually got to him a little. Was that true? HAD he really been the one who started this?  
  
No, he thought. Because it wasn’t intentional at that point. Maybe he had been checking James out, but he wasn’t moving on him. He hadn’t been doing it on purpose. But James sure had.  
  
“You really are just a fucking kid aren’t you?” He retorted, knowing that would hurt. “I KNEW this wasn’t going to end well but I got fucking sucked in anyway. No, you’re right, this is MY fault because I was supposed to be the adult here, and obviously I failed.”  
  
“You bastard” James spat and walked out of the room.  
  
Teddy felt a horrible twinge of regret as he watched him go, but he wasn’t sure he was entirely sorry for what he had said.  
  
He heard the roar of the fire as James flooed back home. Teddy lied back down and let the resentment wash over him.  
  
“FUCK” he yelled into the crushing silence.  
  
He had imagined this scenario a million times. And he always saw it ending exactly this way – with James regretting it and wanting to forget about it. And that WAS what they were going to have to do now, wasn’t it? Just forget it ever happened. Because there was no other way forward, was there? And Teddy had fought so hard for so long against getting into this fucking situation in the first place because he KNEW this was how it would end and FUCK it hurt so much.  
  
Only it hurt even worse than he imagined, because last night there had been a glimmer of hope. A vague possibility that it might NOT end like this. And because he was a fucking idiot he let himself start to believe that maybe it was possible. But it wasn’t. It just wasn’t.  
  
He heard the roar of the fire again, and to his surprise James appeared at the door again. His eyes were red and rather watery.  
  
“I’m sorry” James said quietly, and much more calmly than they had been speaking earlier. “Can we forget everything we just said and start again, please?”  
  
Teddy was taken aback by the maturity of this suggestion and nodded silently, gesturing for James to sit down, whilst he sat up himself and leaned against the headboard. He was uncomfortably aware of being naked underneath the covers, but he couldn’t get up to grab some clothes without exposing himself, so he carefully bunched the covers around his waist.  
  
“I’m sorry too” Teddy said. “I shouldn’t have called you a kid. That was a dick thing to say.”  
  
James gave him a weak smile.  
  
“No, you’re right. Sneaking out of here like that. That was really immature. And you deserve better than that. I’m sorry.”  
  
Teddy looked at his pained expression and knew that he really meant it. He didn’t know if that made this whole thing better or worse. At least James calling him a bastard and storming out made it kind of easier to hate him. This… this was agony.  
  
“Look, Jamie…” Teddy sighed. He really didn’t want to have this conversation, but he knew they were going to have to. “You’re my best friend and… that’s more important than anything. This doesn’t need to mess that up. We’ll always be friends OK?”  
  
James nodded, looking down at the bed.  
  
“I think it was a mistake. Maybe we should just pretend it never happened?” James said quietly.  
  
Teddy had known these words were coming, but they still cut through him like a knife.  
  
“Yeah” he said, focusing all of his effort on keeping his voice steady. “Maybe…”  
  
James looked up at him with big, sad eyes.  
  
“We’re gonna be OK, right?” he asked, fearfully.  
  
Teddy smiled at him.  
  
“Of course.”  
  
James returned him smile. They looked at each other for a few moments, then James cleared his throat nervously.  
  
“Well, I’m gonna… go, then…”  
  
Teddy nodded, but he couldn’t bring himself to say goodbye. He just looked down at the floor while James left. He closed his eyes as he heard the fire roar for a third time, and felt hot tears spill down his cheeks.


	5. Let me just get my shit together

There was knock on Teddy’s office door. He didn’t look up from the book he was studying as he called “come in” and the door opened.  
  
He had expected whoever it was to just state their business, but when they didn’t he looked up, and was very surprised to see James stood there in the doorway.  
  
"Oh, hey...“ Teddy said, nervously.  
  
This was the first time they had seen each other since the morning after… THAT night. Nearly four weeks had passed and Teddy had been working pretty much round the clock, trying to get James out of his head. He had turned down three invitations in a row now to Potter-Saturday-Dinner, and he knew that Harry was getting suspicious as to why. Teddy never missed it when the kids were home from school. He had also been completely ignoring all correspondence from his friends. With the exception of one howler he had received from Luke, which had screamed something like ‘I KNOW HE FUCKING LOVES YOU TOO, THE TWO OF YOU NEED TO FUCKING TALK TO EACH OTHER.’ Teddy had sent one back, telling him to fuck off and mind his own business.  
  
Luke was right about them needing to talk to each other though, Teddy knew he couldn’t avoid him forever. But he just didn’t feel like he could face it yet. Not when every time he thought about his face it made him want to scream with hurt and frustration.  
  
He looked at James’s face now. It didn’t make him feel as angry as reminiscing about everything that had happened did. In fact, he couldn’t bring himself to feel any anger or resentment at all when he was face to face in person with James like this. All he felt was a dull ache of longing.  
  
Unrequited feelings aside though, this was awkward as hell. James was looking around the room so he wouldn’t have to look at Teddy. Teddy waited for him to say something, but he just stood there.  
  
“I’m sorry, uh, why are you here?” he asked, eventually.  
  
"Oh, um… Dad wants that file on the Smithson case" James replied, finally looking at Teddy. There was hurt in his eyes, and Teddy couldn’t help but feel a twinge of guilt for freezing him out for so long.  
  
"OK, but what are you doing here at the ministry" Teddy asked. "You your dad's messenger now?"  
  
"Oh right" James said. “Dad brought me in to meet a guy in the goblin liaison office.”  
  
That did not clear things up. Teddy raised an eyebrow inquisitively, so James expanded.  
  
“Quidditch is, uh, well, it was never a long term thing… I um, I quit. Two weeks ago, actually. I want to work for Gringotts.”  
  
Teddy was so surprised he actually forgot about the awkwardness for a second.  
  
“Wow, James, that’s huge” he said. “But since when did you want to give up Quidditch?”  
  
“I’ve been thinking about it for a while” James said, uncharacteristically shy. “You know, all that shit with the press was kind of holding me back.”  
  
Teddy did know. James had always been under public scrutiny, being the eldest child of Harry Potter. But as an aspiring Quidditch star the media had been particularly hard on him, comparing him somewhat unfavourably to his mother. Teddy thought that James was a very good player, and flew comparably well to Ginny in her heyday. But, well, ‘Rumours of nepotism in latest Puddlemere signing’ was a better headline than ‘yet another Potter is a very good Quidditch player’. This had followed James around since he left Hogwarts, and had made all the major league teams hesitant to take him on.  
  
“You shouldn’t let that stop you doing it though” Teddy said sternly.  
  
“I know” James said, smiling for the first time. “It’s not so much about what anyone thinks or anything, it was just… It just wasn’t fun anymore, you know?”  
  
“And you think banking will be more fun?” Teddy asked incredulously. James laughed.  
  
“Curse breaking, actually. And yes, actually I do” he replied. “Anyway, it can’t be worse than what YOU do” he added, gesturing around the room.  
  
“Curse breaking, look at you” Teddy smiled, impressed. “This is major, I can’t believe you didn’t tell me you quit your team.”  
  
The smile slid from James’s face, and Teddy realised what a stupid thing that was to say. The reason James hadn’t told him was because they weren’t speaking.  
  
Great, now it was awkward again.  
  
They looked at each other in awkward silence for a few moments.  
  
“I’ve missed you Teddy” James said, quietly.  
  
Teddy felt like his insides had melted.  
  
“I’ve missed you too, kid” he said. He meant it.  
  
They smiled at each other sadly for a moment.  
  
"So, have you got the file then?" James asked.  
  
"Oh, right"  
  
Teddy’s office was somewhat tidier than usual at the moment. Since he had been looking for any excuse not to go home, he had taken the time to organise his files and neaten up the walls. But that still didn’t mean he knew where anything was. He had a feeling the file in question was in the filing cabinet by the door, right next to James. He didn’t particularly want to get that close to him, but it would have been ridiculous and childish behaviour to tell him to move or something, so Teddy got up and went over to the filing cabinet, trying very hard not to be weird about it, only wavering slightly when he caught a waft of the smell of James’s shampoo.  
  
As he started rummaging through the files, he noticed James take a small step back away from him. He took solace in the fact that the weirdness wasn’t just on his end. Not that that made the situation any better. For what felt like the millionth time he cursed himself for ever letting himself get carried away that night. Now his best mate couldn’t even fucking stand next to him. And he wasn’t even sharing huge, life-changing news with him anymore. All because Teddy couldn't keep it in his fucking pants.

Damn it, the file wasn’t there. Teddy racked his brains, trying to think of when he last looked at the Smithson case. It was quite recently, wasn’t it?  
  
“I think it might be on my desk” Teddy told James, who was blushing very slightly. Teddy wondered why, and then realised that he had been bending over the filing cabinet with his arse stuck out, and wondered feverishly if James had been checking him out.  
  
Fuck, better not start that line of thinking again, he told himself.  
  
At this point he also noticed that James was stood directly between himself and the stack of files on his desk. The only other way to get to them would be walking all the way around the other side of the desk. And that would be weird right?  
  
“Um, there, on my desk” he pointed. James didn’t seem to understand, and just looked blankly back at him.  
  
Fuck.  
  
So Teddy had to reach past him and slide the stack over towards himself so he could go through them. His arm brushed against James’s as he did so and Teddy had to close his eyes for a second with the effort of not thinking about the last time they touched. About the feel of James's skin on his. About James's breath coming in gasps in Teddy’s ear. A slight shiver went down his spine.  
  
Fuck, get it together, he thought to himself.  
  
"Oh, sorry" James muttered, now edging sideways along the space between Teddy and a potted plant next to the desk, trying to extricate himself. As he did so, his pelvis momentarily pressed against Teddy's arse, which caused both of them to take a sharp inhale.  
  
"Sorry" whispered James again.  
  
Teddy felt like his skin was on fire with the fucking tension of it. He couldn't take much more of this.  
  
Finally, halle-fucking-lujah, he found the file.  
  
"I've got it" he said breathlessly, turning back to James.  
  
James just stood at the other end of the desk, giving Teddy that look. That look he knew all too well. Not the playful ‘I’m going to fuck you tonight’ look that he had been trying to give Teddy all night at the bar. The ‘I want you to fuck me’ look that only appeared on his face when Teddy had slammed him into the wall. And it was that look more than anything else that had led them into so much trouble on that night. The logical part of Teddy’s brain wanted to run the hell out of there. But something much more animalistic had him rooted to the spot, breathing heavily, as James slowly advanced towards him.  
  
James's face was dangerously close to his before he came to his senses. He grabbed the file from the desk and held it up between them  
  
"You’d better get this to the boss..." he blurted out.  
  
James swallowed nervously and backed away a little.  
  
"Yeah, sure, of course" he said quietly, looking at the floor.  
  
Even though he was the one who had stopped it, Teddy felt crushing disappointment as James hastily rearranged his features to a weird, forced-casual expression and took the file from him.  
  
"OK, See you later" he said in a strangled voice, as he left.  
  
As the door closed behind James, Teddy let out a long exhale. That had been excruciating.

-

Teddy sat in his office for a full twenty minutes after James had left having a full blown argument with himself inside his head.  
  
On the one hand, there was reason.

James was his best fucking friend, and he had already fucked things up enough there. Right now it was just one mistake. There was still a chance for them to get things back on track, back to normal. But the chances of that ever happening would get exponentially smaller with every subsequent ‘mistake’. They could NOT go down that road again. Not ever.

But then, on the other hand, there was desire.

He had wanted James for such a long time that indulging that night had been OH SO FUCKING GOOD. It was mind blowingly, life changingly good. And it was really hard to listen to reason when he thought about how incredible that night had been. And when he thought about how much James still clearly wanted him now. 

But wanting to shag me is not the same as wanting to be with me, Teddy told himself miserably. 

So this was the way it had to be. Because he would rather keep James as a friend and push those feelings down than lose him forever over a couple of stupid shags. No matter how incredible those shags might be. Because this was Jamie, and it wasn’t possible to separate out the sex from the _feelings_.

Teddy sighed. It was such a fucking mess.  
  
He got up from his chair to go and get a cup of coffee. However, when he opened his office door, to his great surprise, James was stood there. Teddy nearly walked right into him.  
  
“James! You're - I'm sorry, I... what are you doing standing outside my office?" He was very confused.  
  
"Oh, um, dad said you can take the afternoon off. Get an early start on your weekend..." James said.  
  
Teddy looked at him, still confused.  
  
"Erm, why?" He asked.  
  
"Well, what he actually said was the two of us should go and start our weekend. Perks of being the boss’s son, I guess..." James said.  
  
"Oh right..." Teddy said.  
  
There was an awkward pause. He and James didn’t have any plans for the weekend of course. Because they were barely speaking at the moment. Because of the stupid weirdness. Because of that stupid, incredible night.  
  
"Look, I know we don't have plans or anything. I'm just, relaying the message" James said, looking at the floor. Teddy felt bad for him.  
  
"No that’s OK, we should do something" Teddy said. "We haven’t hung out in ages. Let me just get my shit together." In more ways than one, he thought.  
  
He went back into his office.  
  
“I’ll just be a sec, gotta lock these files up” Teddy said. It was an unnecessary security measure, in Teddy’s opinion, since you had to go through a decent amount of security just to get into the Auror office in the first place. But his boss would string him up if he left confidential reports lying around on his desk all weekend.  
  
He threw them all into the filing cabinet and started waving his wand over it, casting the necessary enchantments. The cabinet started wobbling for some reason. Teddy frowned.  
  
“What the…” then he realised the problem. “Oh, James, it won’t work with you standing there. One of the protective spells is a forcefield and you’re in the radius.”  
  
“Oh, sorry” James took a step to the right, but he was still in range. It wasn’t a particularly large office so there weren’t really many places for him to stand that weren’t in the way.  
  
Teddy grabbed his hand and pulled him over, next to him.  
  
“Here” he said, and started casting the enchantments. It worked this time  
  
“What happens if I touch the forcefield?” James asked.  
  
“You can’t” Teddy told him. “Go on, try”  
  
James reached out his hand and seemed to hit an invisible barrier which he couldn’t penetrate.  
  
“Very cool” he said, impressed.  
  
“Aurors have all the tricks” Teddy smiled, grabbing his jacket from the back of his desk chair. He turned back to James, who was feeling around trying to find the edges of the forcefield, apparently fascinated.  
  
“Here” he said, taking James’s hand and showing him when the field curved.  
  
Teddy hadn’t meant for this to be a sensual gesture, but it undeniably was so. He was stood very close to James, his head over one of James’s shoulders, one of his hands on top of one of James’s guiding around the edge of the forcefield. He felt James’s breath start to deepen, and Teddy felt a stirring inside himself again. Fucking hell, this boy would be the death of him.  
  
James leant back ever so slightly into him so that their bodies were touching and Teddy knew he should stop this now, but his resolve had very much started to degrade after that incident earlier and he just couldn’t. It didn’t help that the smell of James’s shampoo was overwhelming from this position and Teddy was finding it a bit of a sensory overload. It was making it difficult for him to think straight.  
  
James let out a very quiet sigh and a moment of madness took over Teddy, who planted a gentle kiss on the back of his neck.  
  
“ _Teddy…_ ” James whispered softly.  
  
Teddy breathed out heavily, trying his very best to get a hold of himself. But it didn’t work. He couldn’t stand another second of this. He took half a step back and roughly turned James around so they were face to face. A brief glance into James’s deep brown eyes, giving him that fucking look again, was all he needed to know there was not a damn thing he could do to stop this now.  
  
Teddy kissed him desperately. James’s arms snaked around Teddy’s waist and he grabbed Teddy’s arse, pushing it in towards him. Teddy let out a low grunt and held James even tighter, kissing him fiercely, not wanting to part their lips for even a second. Once again he lost all sense of what he was doing and whether this was a good idea. He just NEEDED Jamie.


	6. We're a pair of fucking morons

Teddy lay with his legs tangled in the bedsheets and James's head on his bare chest.  
  
The cool air felt soothing on his red hot skin. He was still panting a little. Still coming down from the frantic rush of hormones that had taken over him.  
  
He looked down at James, who appeared to be in a coma. His completely limp body was pressed up against Teddy's, one arm draped over his stomach. His head was tilted downwards, so Teddy couldn't see if his eyes were open or not.  
  
Teddy let out a slow exhale. This was the dangerous part.  
  
He had tried so hard not to do it again. He had avoided James like the plague for the past 4 weeks, hadn’t he? Not just because he was licking his wounds, he now admitted to himself, but also because he just didn’t trust himself. But James had just gradually worn him down today. When he had just showed up at his office like that... It had caught Teddy off guard. And when Teddy was looking for that file… Had he brushed up against him like that on purpose? And then he had been so tantalizingly, tortuously close to him when they were messing with the forcefield… Teddy had felt like his brain was on fire, both with the intensity of the anticipation and the effort of resisting temptation. It was all just too much.  
  
Giving into the passion wasn't the dangerous part though. The sex was wild and animalistic and FUCKING FANTASTIC. But ultimately it was just sex. At least, that's what they had agreed last time, right? Best just to forget it ever happened. No big deal. Even though every second of it made Teddy feel like he wanted to scream and cry at the same time because he fucking loved James so much...  
  
But at the end of the day it was just sex. And sex doesn't always mean something.  
  
But this, right here. This was the part that was going to break his heart. Lying here with James in his arms. Kissing him softly and gently caressing his skin. Feeling his slow, gentle breathing as he snoozed on Teddy's chest. This was the moment where he was going to fall even deeper in love with him, if such a thing were even possible. And James cuddling up to him like this - their bodies fitting together so perfectly. This was going to make him start to believe that it was possible. That there really could be something between them that was more than friendship and sexual compatibility.  
  
THIS was what he'd really been trying to avoid. What he'd really been trying not to do. Because it just hurt too much. And he couldn't bear to get his hopes up and see that regret in James's eyes again. Not ever.  
  
As much as Teddy wanted to just lie there and live in this moment for as long as it was possible, he just couldn't do it. He wasn't strong enough to do this a second time.  
  
He gingerly lifted up James's arm that was draped over him.  
  
"Jamie" he whispered. "Are you asleep?"  
  
"Sort of" James slurred, wriggling his wrist free from Teddy and wrapping his arm back around him. "Whassup?"  
  
Teddy squirmed uncomfortably and began to slide himself out from under James, who started to sit up groggily, looking confused.  
  
"I'm sorry" Teddy muttered, not looking at him. "I just... I need to..."  
  
He had now manoeuvred his way to the edge of the bed and started getting dressed again, pulling on his boxers and a t-shirt. James fully sat up and nervously wrapped the bedcovers around his waist, kneeling in the middle of the bed. Teddy chanced a glance at his face. He was looking fearfully at Teddy, biting his lower lip.  
  
"I can't do it again" Teddy said, his voice breaking. He rested his head in his hands. "I can't pretend it doesn't mean anything."  
  
He felt the mattress moving. The next thing he knew, James arms were snaking around his chest and James lips were softly touching the back of his neck. He inhaled sharply as a shiver went down his spine.  
  
"Please come back" James whispered. "It does, OK? It does mean something..."  
  
Teddy stayed where he was, letting those words sink in. A huge bubble of hope was expanding inside him. But at the same time he was afraid to believe it. Afraid that it was too good to be true.  
  
"Don't say that if you don't fucking mean it" he said quietly, but he sat up straighter and allowed James to continue kissing his neck, now working his way around the side and along his jawline.  
  
"Of course I fucking mean it" James whispered back.  
  
Teddy turned around, removing James's arms from around him and placing his hands down between them on the bed. He looked James directly in the eye, looking for any signs of anything other than absolute sincerity. James still looked worried, but he gave Teddy a weak smile.  
  
"I'm a coward!" James burst out. "I'm a fucking chicken shit, OK? I didn't want to lose you so I... But that's fucking stupid, because I nearly lost you anyway didn't I?" He looked down at the bed.  
  
"You didn't lose me Jamie" Teddy replied, gently placing a hand under James's chin and tilting his head up to look him in the eye again. "You'll never lose me. It just... hurt too much, to pretend like I didn't... It was killing me."  
  
James wrapped his arms around Teddy's neck and pulled him into a hug. Teddy rested the side of his face on James's bare chest. He felt exhausted. But at least they were finally getting somewhere. Finally being honest with each other about how they felt.  
  
He felt James kiss the top of his head and he sighed softly.  
  
"I shouldn't have said it was a mistake." James said. "It wasn't. I wanted it. For a long time, I wanted it. I wanted YOU. And I still do."  
  
Teddy felt like his heart skipped a beat. He broke the hug and sat up, looking into James's eyes. He could tell he was being serious.  
  
"You know, if that’s what you want" James added, hesitantly.  
  
Teddy felt an array of emotions wash over him. Relief, joy, satisfaction, hope. He was overwhelmed. To his own surprise as much as James’s, he started laughing.  
  
“What?” said James warily.  
  
"We're a pair of fucking morons" Teddy said, still laughing.  
  
“We are?” James said, still confused.  
  
“You want to be with me – but we’re friends and you didn’t want to fuck that up?” he asked. James nodded, still looking at Teddy like he was worried he’d lost his mind.  
  
“That’s the exact same fucking reason I’ve been pushing you away for weeks Jamie.”  
  
James finally stopped looking worried and laughed.  
  
“Yeah you’re right” he agreed. “We are fucking morons.”  
  
Teddy pushed him back down on the bed and climbed on top of him, kissing him deeply. James ran his hands over Teddy's back under his t-shirt. It felt strangely surreal. Teddy had been dreaming about this for so long he almost couldn't be sure it was really happening. James wanted him. Like, actually wanted to be with him. Wanted to be his. Teddy took James's hands and entwined their fingers, kissing his neck.  
  
"Don't you ever fucking hold out on me again, OK?" He said gently, but lifted his head to look seriously down at James.  
  
"Never" James replied breathlessly.  
  
"Good" Teddy grinned, and continued to assault him with kisses.


	7. I guess I just didn’t want to admit that I’d failed

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> From this point onwards the story becomes a bit more complex and I started to really explore the characters and their world a bit more. If you were just looking for a bit of James/Teddy fluff from this fic then I'd call it quits at this point.

“Food’s here” Teddy called to James as he entered the flat carrying a large pizza. He could just about get the TV to work as long as no-one was casting any magic in the flat, but his attempts so far to get a telephone to work in the apartment had fallen short. He heard other muggles in the building complaining about not being able to get ‘signal’ (whatever that meant) and Teddy it was sure it was because there was just too much magic in the air. But since he couldn’t make phone calls, he was reduced to actually going and getting it himself when he wanted take-out. Which sort of defeated the purpose, in Teddy’s opinion. But Jamie wanted pizza, so they were having pizza. This was their first evening together now that they were properly together, so Jamie could have whatever he wanted.  
  
James emerged from the bedroom, wearing boxers and a t-shirt.  
  
“Are you not even dressed, you lazy shit?” Teddy grinned.  
  
“What’s the point, you’re just going to undress me later” James replied.  
  
Teddy laughed, putting the pizza box down on the table and then took off his jacket, throwing it carelessly over the back of the sofa. He then turned back to James and pulled him in for an affectionate kiss.  
  
“Hey” James said quietly, smiling, as they broke apart. “Thanks for getting dinner”  
  
“No problem” Teddy replied, sitting down on the floor in the space between the sofa and the coffee table and helping himself to a slice. “OK, so over dinner you are going to tell me about this whole career change thing, because I am seriously fucking behind on that” Teddy added. He had been thinking about this on the way back up to the flat and he knew there had to be more to it than what James had said earlier.  
  
James sat down next to him and grabbed a piece of the pizza too.  
  
“It’s not a big deal” he said bashfully. There was that weird shyness again, Teddy had no idea why he was being so coy about this.  
  
“It sounds like a pretty big deal to me. You’ve just jacked in your career as a quidditch star, that’s not something people do lightly Jamie.”  
  
“I think it’s a bit generous to call me a star” James said, deadpan. “I played one season with Puddlemere which was distinctly average, and then they dropped me because of all the bad press.”  
  
“Fuck those guys” Teddy said dismissively. “Your team was top of the minor leagues. It was only a matter of time before one of the other majors picked you up.”  
  
James shook his head.  
  
“The minor leagues are a joke Teddy. People are more interested in the fucking Hogwarts cup than the Fly-Traps’ fixtures.”  
  
James’s minor league team was called the Venus Fly-Traps. And Teddy would never say it to his face but James was right about that, no-one cared about their success. No-one even knew who they were. Teddy only knew who they were because of James.  
  
“Talent scouts will care about the Fly-Traps’ fixtures” Teddy countered.  
  
“All the talent scouts already know who I am Teddy” James said, defeatedly. “I’m famous remember? No, a major league club is never going to take me because it’s just too much press attention. And most of them have all sorts of deals going on under the table so they don’t want anyone looking too closely.”  
  
“What, really?” Teddy asked, surprised.  
  
“Oh yeah” James said with a hollow laugh. “Bribing officials to get the good fixtures, dodgy sponsorship deals, tactical throwing of games so they can rig the betting… You wouldn’t believe the half of it. No, I knew as soon as Puddlemere dropped me that it was over. I guess I didn’t really know what else to do so I just carried on playing.”  
  
“Shit…”  
  
Teddy was reeling in this revelation. He had had no idea that James had gone through all this. He had known about James being dropped by Puddlemere of course, but James had laughed it off at the time. And he had been so enthusiastic about joining the Fly Traps that anyone speaking to him who didn’t know the leagues would have thought it was a promotion, rather than a step down. But of course it had been a front. Teddy kicked himself for not noticing it before. It was bloody obvious.  
  
“Oh don’t look at me like that” James said irritably. “I’m not a charity case. I played one season in the major leagues, that’s still pretty fucking good. And yeah, sure, it would have been cool to play for England one day… But it’s not going to happen, so…” he shrugged. “No point in crying about it is there…”  
  
James sat back and looked broodingly down at his can of coke. His resemblance to Al was suddenly striking. It weirded Teddy out very slightly and he gave his head a little shake, trying to get that picture out of his mind.  
  
Teddy took James’s free hand and gave it a reassuring squeeze.  
  
“It’s fine! Seriously!” James laughed, as he looked at Teddy and that faraway look in his eyes disappeared. He looked much more like himself. “I’m over it.”  
  
Teddy didn’t think that was true, but he let it slide.  
  
“So how did you quit?” Teddy asked, smiling. “Was it really dramatic? Did you sashay out of there, like, ‘I’m done with you fucking losers’?”  
  
James laughed.  
  
“Not exactly, I might tell people I did though. It makes for a much better story. No I just told the captain that I felt like I’d gone as far as I was going to and… he tried to talk me round, you know, but, I’d made up my mind by that point.”  
  
Teddy smiled at him in admiration. Shit, he really had grown up.  
  
“And now is the right time to go” James added. “They’ve got a couple of months to find a new chaser before the season starts.”  
  
“OK” Teddy said. “I get all that. But why banking?”  
  
“Curse breaking!” James corrected him. “Don’t call it banking, you make it sound so fucking boring!”  
  
Teddy laughed.  
  
“Well, I’d been thinking about it for a while you know, what my next move was going to be. I actually considered the Auror thing for a bit.”  
  
“You’re kidding me?”  
  
“Of course I considered it, I mean, it’s right there right? I could slide into it no problem. The whole dad thing aside, my defence grades were pretty decent. And I’d have you to help me get through the training. But… I dunno, it just didn’t really seem to fit.”  
  
“OK, but why curse breaking then?”  
  
“Honestly?” James asked, tentatively. Teddy nodded and put down his slice of pizza, giving James his full attention.  
  
James shrugged.  
  
“I have no idea. It seems like as good a job as any. Interesting enough – lots of problem solving and a little bit of danger. And my uncle Bill does it so I’ve sort of got a mentor there. I just felt like it was time to stop dicking around and do something serious, you know?”  
  
Teddy narrowed his eyes at those words. Because that didn’t sound like something James would say. That sounded like something Teddy would say.  
  
“Jamie, is this because of me?” he asked, seriously.  
  
“No” James said, waving dismissively. But under Teddy’s disbelieving stare he relented. “Alright maybe a little.”  
  
Teddy opened his mouth to say tell James that was crazy, but James held up a hand to stop him.  
  
“I know what you’re going to say and this isn’t ABOUT you, OK? It was just… when you said about always being tired from work and how we couldn’t go out on a work night because you have a real job, I started to think like – shit, I DON’T have a real job. I’m just fucking wasting my time.”  
  
“I’m so sorry Jamie” Teddy said, trying to pull him into a hug, but James pushed him off shaking his head.  
  
“No, it’s fine, I’m not upset, I know you didn’t mean it like that…” He said. “It just got me thinking maybe it was actually time to move on. Like I said, I’d been thinking about it for while anyway. And when we… weren’t speaking… I was really pissed at myself for chickening out on you, and I guess some of that crept over into my job and I just – I couldn’t stand it anymore. I felt like I needed to DO something. To take a chance on something real, for once in my fucking life. So I just quit. But I don’t regret it. I think it’s been a long time coming.”  
  
“You know I don’t care about any of that right?” Teddy said looking him the eye. It was important that he understood this. “You don’t need to do this for me. I don’t give a shit whether you have a ‘real’ job or not. I just want you to be happy.”  
  
“I know” James said smiling. “I’m not doing it for you. I’m doing it for me.”  
  
He leaned over and gave Teddy a soft kiss. Teddy knew he was just doing this to distract him, and wasn’t absolved of his guilt. But it did sound as though James had wanted to make the change for a while, of his own volition.  
  
“It also wasn’t fair to mum, what I was doing” James added. “So there’s that to consider too.”  
  
“Shit, does she know about all the dodgy deals and all that?” Teddy asked. He guessed that she must do, she’d been working in professional quidditch for upwards of twenty years.  
  
“Of course she does. The Harpies are actually the cleanest team in the league so she’s not really involved in it. But she knows it goes on” James shook his head. “And she knew the score, when I got dropped by Puddlemere. She knew that was it. But I don’t think she knew that I knew it. So we both just pretended it was all going to be fine. But I know it was killing her to watch me get pushed down the ladder like that. But she couldn’t fucking tell me I was never going to make it, could she? She’s my mum.” James sighed deeply. “And I know it was killing her that there was nothing she could do. She can’t get me on the Harpies because being an all-girls team has always been their thing, they’d lose sponsorship if they broke that. And she couldn’t get me in anywhere else…”  
  
“Shit, Jamie…” Teddy said again. The shock of finding out about mass corruption in the quidditch world was starting wear off and now he felt his anger building the more he was hearing about it. Poor Ginny! And poor Jamie! It was so stupid that he should be held back like this, when he was a genuinely good player.  
  
“It’s alright” James said placidly.  
  
“No, it’s not” Teddy said angrily. “It’s just… so unfair!”  
  
James let out a bark-like laugh.  
  
“Oh, you’re cute when you’re being a Hufflepuff” he teased, grinning at him.  
  
Teddy frowned at him. But James genuinely didn’t seem that bothered about it. Teddy supposed he must have made peace with it a long time ago. It was over a year since he’d been demoted to the minor leagues, after all.  
  
“I wish you’d told me” he said finally.  
  
James shrugged.  
  
“Seemed a bit heavy for a casual pub conversation” he said.  
  
“The pub isn’t the only place we see each other” Teddy said seriously. “You SHOULD have told me.”  
  
“I know…” James sighed. “I guess I just didn’t want to admit that I’d failed…”  
  
Teddy pulled him over for a hug again. James tried to swat him away, but Teddy didn’t let him. He encompassed James in his arms, pulling James’s face into his chest. James quickly stopped resisting and allowed himself to be enveloped. Teddy kissed the top of his head.  
  
“You didn’t fail” he said quietly.  
  
“I know” James’s muffled, defeated, voice replied.


	8. I don’t think that’s a Gryffindor thing, I think that’s a Potter thing

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You may have noticed I like to pepper my stories with bits of information about the wider wizarding world (something I think JK did really well in the originals). The acronym thing in this chapter is one of my favourite snippets I've ever written about this.

Teddy flooed into the Potters house at six o’clock on the next evening. Harry was at the cooker, supervising a large pan and James was setting the table. He gave Teddy a rogueish wink as he climbed out of the fireplace and Teddy shot him a quelling look. Bloody hell, they were never going to get through this evening if he didn’t behave himself.  
  
Teddy tried very hard not to think about the fact that approximately eight hours earlier he and James had been rolling around in bed together, as he greeted Harry and asked what was cooking.  
  
“Nothing fancy, just a simple stew” Harry said. “So, what did you boys get up to last night?”  
  
Teddy’s mouth went dry.  
  
“You wouldn’t believe us if we told you dad” James said, highly amused. Teddy felt himself starting to blush so he turned around, getting some glasses out of the cupboard and putting them on the table. Harry was looking at them both with evident curiosity when Teddy dared to turn back around, making a mental note to give James a dead arm later.  
  
It had been stupid not to anticipate the question, as Teddy remembered now that Harry had given him the afternoon off work yesterday to go and do something with James. And Teddy was usually pretty quick on his feet in situations like this – it wasn’t like he’d never had to lie about his weekend antics to his godfather. But his mind had gone strangely blank. He couldn’t think of a damn thing other than Jamie, in a very compromising position.  
  
“We just went out dad” Jamie shrugged casually. “And Teddy had a bit too much to drink” he added, by way of explanation for Teddy’s sheepishness.  
  
“Ah, I see” Harry said, looking amused. He then went to go and call Ginny to come down for dinner.  
  
“YOU are BAD at this” James muttered to Teddy as he did so. “Get it together man…”  
  
“And you are unnervingly GOOD at this” Teddy retorted. “We’re going to talk about THAT later…” James gave him another mischievous smile and took a seat at the table. Teddy followed suit, sitting opposite him so that he could kick him in the shins if need be.  
  
It would have been insane to tell James’s parents about the two of them only one day after the fact, even if weren’t for all the other issues that were tangled up in this. It hadn’t even been a conversation. James had asked Teddy if he was still coming for dinner and then asked if he was going to be able to ‘act normal’. Teddy had said at the time that of course he could. But now he was here he knew he was being weird. He felt like Harry’s eyes were burning into him. He was so uncomfortably aware of this big secret that he had. And of the consequences of spilling said secret. He felt rattled.  
  
James gave him a warm smile across the table and he felt his tension ease a little. He smiled back, but then jumped slightly as Ginny came clattering into the kitchen, carrying a large box of what appeared to be quaffles. She dropped it by the back door and then joined them at the table, sitting next to James.  
  
“Checking that they’re all regulation compliant” Ginny explained as Teddy looked inquisitively at her. “One of my new chasers has been awfully particular lately about which ball we use in our practise games. She says it’s about good luck, but…” she narrowed her eyes mistrustfully. After everything James had told him last night, Teddy couldn’t blame her.  
  
“Want me to take a look?” James asked, and Ginny smiled at him.  
  
“Give them a once over if you want” she said casually. “I couldn’t find anything though. I guess Sarah really is just an idiot.”  
  
Harry started ladling the stew into bowls and handing them round the table.  
  
“But anyway” Ginny said, waving a hand dismissively. “Enough about that. What’s new with you, Teddy?” she asked.  
  
She had said it in a casual tone, but there was weight behind the question. Teddy could feel all three sets of eyes on him as he nervously dug his spoon into his bowl of stew.  
  
“Um, nothing really” he said, doing his best to look innocently back at her.  
  
“Haven’t seen you in a while” she said pointedly.  
  
“Mum, don’t interrogate him” James protested.  
  
“I’m not!” she said, defensively. “I’m just interested. I can ask, can’t I?” she said, addressing Teddy.  
  
“Yeah of course you can” he replied, chancing half a glance at James, who was looking apologetically at him. “I’m sorry I missed Lily and Al the past couple of weeks, I’ve just been busy with…” he tailed off.  
  
Busy with work was his go-to excuse, but he couldn’t use that here. Because Harry knew he wasn’t. He looked at James for help.  
  
“Work?” James supplied tentatively, clearly also struggling to think of something.  
  
Teddy shook his head.  
  
“No, work’s fine…”  
  
He could DEFINIETLY feel Harry’s eyes burning into him now. Ginny’s too.  
  
“Busy with _someone_?” she asked, somewhat playfully. She had the same mischievous smile as James, and THAT was unnerving.  
  
“Gin!” Harry chastised her this time.  
  
“What?” she said in the same defensive tone.  
  
“Don’t force it out of him” Harry said, laughing a little. “Leave the poor boy alone!”  
  
Ginny looked as though she wanted to argue her case, but she didn’t, she merely sat back and began to eat her stew, smirking at Harry. James mouthed the word ‘sorry’ at him.  
  
“It’s OK” Teddy said, to all three of them. “It’s just… it’s early days. I don’t want to talk about it yet.”  
  
Well, that was the truth. He also didn’t want to talk about it because the ‘someone’ in question was there at the table with them. But they didn’t need to know that.  
  
Ginny grinned widely at him. Harry looked mildly surprised. James winked at him again and Teddy kicked him under the table.  
  
“So what did I miss?” Teddy asked, hastily changing the subject. “How are Lily and Al getting on? Has Al changed the course of wizarding history again yet this year?”  
  
Ginny and James laughed.  
  
“No, he seems pretty settled at the minute actually” Ginny said. “You know he’s got his OWLs coming up, so he’s pretty much studying round the clock.”  
  
“Oh yeah” Teddy replied. He had forgotten that Al was in his OWL year. “Does he know what he wants to do yet?”  
  
“No” Ginny replied. “But that’s not surprising, none of my boys have been particularly quick off the mark” she said, looking pointedly between Teddy and James, but still smiling.  
  
“Oh of course” Teddy said, looking mischievously at James. “That’s the big news at the minute isn’t it? Jamie’s retirement. And so young…”  
  
James shot him a filthy look for making him the centre of attention, but Teddy merely smiled back. Now it was James’s turn to be interrogated.  
  
“James said you met with someone in the GLO the other day” Teddy addressed Harry. “Goblin Liaison Office” he added, in response to Harry’s blank look.  
  
“You youths and your bloody acronyms” Harry said smiling. “You do realise it takes twice as long, because you then have to explain to people what it means.”  
  
This was a particular bugbear of most of the higher-ups at the ministry these days. The new recruits wanted to shorten everything into acronyms (mostly to make the memos shorter), but the senior management was struggling to keep up. The various department heads were getting increasingly frustrated with having to ask for clarification over everything, whereas the youngsters found it hilarious that they didn’t even recognise an abbreviation of the name of their own department. Teddy had to admit, it was starting to get a little out of hand, with some people abbreviating phrases that it made absolutely no sense to, just to aggravate their bosses. Teddy’s personal favourite was ‘MMUIFIIDBL’ – meet me upstairs in five, it’s important, don’t be late. The minister herself found the whole situation highly amusing, and had passed a decree declaring that acronyms were only allowed if they were also a word in their own right (eg, OWLs, SPEW). As such, GLO was technically an illicit acronym. Whereas DICK (Department of Information, Cataloguing and Knowledge ) was perfectly acceptable. Not to be confused with DIC (Department of International Cooperation) which was in fact an illegal acronym.  
  
“You gotta move with the times Harry” Teddy said, grinning.  
  
“Or be more selective in my recruitment process” Harry laughed. “Yeah, we met with Peter Johnson, he’s going to take James as an intern for a few weeks, get him used to dealing with goblins. Their culture can be a bit tricky.”  
  
James rolled his eyes.  
  
“Yeah, and dad spent half the meeting talking about the sword of Gryffindor and how he once had to make a deal with goblins over it.”  
  
“What? That’s a good story!” Harry protested, and Ginny rolled her eyes.

-

The rest of the meal passed uneventfully and James and Teddy retired to James’s room afterwards under the pretext of giving Ginny’s quaffles a second look between them. Since Teddy was an auror and James was an ex-quidditch player, between them they did have the necessary skillset. Teddy thought that since they had said they would, maybe they really ought to actually look at the balls, but James put the box down by the door and then flopped onto his bed, clearly with no intention of moving.  
  
“Oh don’t worry” James said, in response to Teddy’s raised eyebrows. “Mum knows what she’s doing, if she says they’re fine then they’re fine.”  
  
Teddy felt a twinge of guilt, but he joined James on the bed regardless, lying down next to him and pulling him in for a long and tender kiss.  
  
“Fuck, I’ve wanted to do that all night” he whispered as they broke apart. James smiled at him.  
  
“Me too” he said. “But ONE of us had to keep our cool.”  
  
“Yeah, about that” Teddy said, sitting up. “When did you become such a fucking master of deceit?”  
  
James laughed.  
  
“Teddy, I’ve been lying to my parents about what me and you get up to for years. What, you think I come home every weekend and tell them I got blind drunk and arrested for fighting with a muggle? ”  
  
“That only happened once” Teddy said, smiling at the memory. James hadn’t started the fight but he had sure as hell finished it. That was when he was playing for Puddlemere and his muscle tone was at an all time high from intense training sessions every day. Teddy had argued with the muggle police officer until he threw him in the car as well, and Teddy had obliviated him on the way to the station.  
  
“And anyway” James said, sitting up himself. “Since when were you such a terrible fucking liar? Don’t you basically do that for a living?”  
  
Teddy laughed.  
  
“I think you think my job is much more exciting than it actually is. There’s not a lot of covert ops these days. Dark magic activity is actually at an all time low right now.”  
  
He thought about what James had said, about how they had always lied to Harry and Ginny to some extent about what their weekends involved. But this felt different, somehow.  
  
“This isn’t the same Jamie” he said, shuffling uncomfortably. “Drunken antics is one thing, but this… it’s bigger stakes than that.”  
  
“I know” James agreed quietly. “Do you… do you WANT to tell them?” he asked hesitantly.  
  
“Oh Christ no” Teddy replied quickly, and James laughed. “I just… I guess I still haven’t quite wrapped my head around it yet. It’s…” Teddy was struggling to find the right words. He didn’t want to say the wrong thing. Fortunately James didn’t seem to have the same problem.  
  
“It’s WEIRD, right?” he said, bluntly.  
  
“SO weird!” Teddy laughed. “But not… being with you isn’t weird, it’s just, with Harry and everything…”  
  
“No, I get it” James said, looking amused. “When mum said that thing about us both being ‘her boys’ it was like…” he shuddered uncomfortably.  
  
“We’re NOT related” Teddy said firmly, unsure if he was reassuring James or himself.  
  
“I know that” James said. “But I’m not sure that anyone else does…”  
  
They looked uncomfortably at each other. Fuck, why did this have to be so complicated?  
  
“I don’t care what anyone thinks though” James said, suddenly stern. “You know that, right?”  
  
Teddy smiled.  
  
“Me neither” he said, taking James’s hand. “But let’s just… keep it between us, for now, OK?”  
  
James nodded in agreement.  
  
“We’re going to have to tell Luke though, because he might never speak to you again otherwise” James said, smiling again.  
  
“Yeah, what did you say to him?” Teddy asked, suspiciously. “He sent me fucking howler you know?”  
  
James looked both surprised and apologetic.  
  
“No, I didn’t know about that. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to go behind your back or anything – he was the one who contacted me…”  
  
This wasn’t altogether surprising to Teddy. Luke was a classic Hufflepuff and couldn’t bear it when things weren’t ‘right’. Ever since their first year at school together he had been the one who set Teddy straight whenever his moral compass veered slightly off course. One memorable time when Teddy had fucked up pretty badly (he had slept with a mutual friend’s girlfriend) Luke had delivered a pretty severe beat down which resulted in Teddy having to go to the healer with a broken nose. He had fully deserved it though and Teddy had never done anything THAT stupid again. But Luke still had cause to call him out from time to time. This certainly wasn’t the first howler he had received from him.  
  
“Let me guess” Teddy said, exasperated, but also feeling a twinge of affection for Luke. “He apologised on my behalf and told you I’m an inconsiderate shit?”  
  
“In so many words” James said, smiling. “He also eluded to there being more going on than you were letting on and he said I really needed to talk to you.”  
  
Teddy nodded. That sounded like Luke. He wouldn’t betray Teddy entirely by revealing his secret to James, but he would push the two of them together and force them to have it out themselves.  
  
“So did you figure it out then?” Teddy asked. “How I felt?”  
  
“Well, I didn’t know what else it could be” James replied. “But I still wasn’t sure whether to believe it or not… it felt too much like wishful thinking…”  
  
Teddy smiled at him. The pair of them really were idiots. Both of them pining over each other all this time, when all it took was for one of them to just have the fucking guts to admit how they felt.  
  
“Fucking hell Jamie, you’re supposed to be the brave one.”  
  
“Being a Gryffindor doesn’t mean you’re always brave” James argued. “It just means you’re always stupid. Diving head first into things without thinking.” Teddy knew he was thinking about that night at the bar.  
  
“I don’t think that’s a Gryffindor thing, I think that’s a Potter thing” Teddy laughed. “Al is living proof of that” he added, and James joined in the laughter.  
  
“Alright, I’ll talk to Luke” Teddy said finally.  
  
James nodded and gave him a reassuring smile.  
  
“First though” Teddy said, retrieving the box from over by the door “we’re going to look at these quaffles.”  
  
James rolled his eyes, but took one out of the box obligingly nonetheless.


	9. Of course I was right. I’m always fucking right

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Luke was originally intended just to be a sounding board for Teddy, but as I started to develop his character I really quite liked him. We all have that one 'mother hen' friend who runs around after everyone else :)

Teddy flooed directly from the Potters to Luke’s flat. He was exhausted, but he wanted to get this over with. He hated fighting with Luke – especially because he knew whenever it happened he was always in the wrong.  
  
The front room was empty and Teddy thought for a minute that maybe Luke was out, but Luke emerged from the bedroom looking confused. He stopped short when he spotted Teddy, and his expression darkened.  
  
“Let’s hear it then” he said simply. It was a mark of the seriousness of the situation that he wasn’t berating Teddy like usual for flooing directly in without warning.  
  
“You were right” Teddy said. He wasn’t sure whether he should be apologising, thanking Luke or just explaining what had happened. He was still trying to gauge exactly how angry Luke was. Luke’s expression softened at Teddy’s words however and he snorted.  
  
“Of course I was right. I’m always fucking right” he said, walking into the kitchen to get a bottle of wine and some glasses. He set them down on the table, pulling up a chair. Teddy did the same.  
  
“So what are you going to do about it?” Luke asked, pouring the wine. “Or rather, what HAVE you done about it? I assume that’s what you came here to tell me?”  
  
He didn’t really seem angry at all. Maybe mildly exasperated, a tad tired of Teddy’s shit. But he didn’t seem to be mad. That made Teddy feel even guiltier.  
  
“Sorry I told you to fuck off. I didn’t mean it” Teddy said, taking a sip of his wine.  
  
“Yes you did” Luke looked amused. “And you’d do it again in a heartbeat. Honey if I was going to get upset everytime you screamed at me there’s no way we’d still be friends.”  
  
Teddy smiled at that.  
  
“OK, so why did Jamie think you were pissed off?” Teddy asked.  
  
“Oh well I was a little when I spoke to him” Luke said, waving a hand dismissively. “But that was before you told me to fuck off. No I was pissed at you for being a fucking pussy and letting him go. Especially when it was so fucking OBVIOUS how he felt about you.”  
  
“It wasn’t obvious” Teddy argued, a little annoyed by that. “He said it was a mistake!”  
  
Luke waved his hand dismissively again.  
  
“That’s just _words_ Teddy. He quit his fucking team.”  
  
Teddy scowled at him. Luke was exceptionally good at reading people, but he seemed to think that everyone else was being deliberately stupid when they didn’t pick up on the same subtleties that he did.  
  
“I didn’t know about that until yesterday” Teddy told him.  
  
“You didn’t WANT to know” Luke said accusingly, pointing at Teddy with the hand that was holding his glass, in a rather camp fashion. “Open your fucking mail Teddy!”  
  
“Alright, alright…” Teddy said, aggravated.  
  
“So you talked to him?” Luke asked, quite calmly.  
  
“Yeah. He just showed up my office, so I couldn’t ignore him any longer…” Teddy sighed, embarrassed that it had had to come to that for the two of them to finally speak to each other again.  
  
“You shagged him again, didn’t you?”  
  
“I – what?” Teddy spluttered. He was about to deny it, but Luke was looking at him like he could see right through him and Teddy knew there was no point.  
  
“Alright, yes, I did” Teddy said begrudgingly. “But THEN we talked.”  
  
Luke nodded.  
  
“Good. Progress” he said, as though he was a school teacher commenting on Teddy’s homework. Teddy had to resist the urge to smack him, reminding himself how much slack Luke had cut him already during this conversation.  
  
“And we’re gonna… we’re…” Teddy tried to think of a way to say it that didn’t sound completely lame. ‘Together’? ‘Boyfriends’? ‘Making a go of it’?   
  
“Monogamous?” Luke supplied.  
  
Teddy smiled. That was a good way of putting it.  
  
“Yeah, monogamous” he agreed.  
  
“Never thought I’d see the day…” Luke said, refilling their glasses. “Teddy Lupin, settling down…”  
  
Teddy resented that a little. It wasn’t like he had NEVER had a relationship. But never one longer than a couple of months, he conceded. When he was younger he just got bored too quickly. He had felt like being tied down to someone meant that he was missing out on the excitement of infinite possibilities every time he went out. And then, when he had gotten a little older and a little more serious he had given relationships a go every now and then. But he never really found anyone he particular WANTED to make it work with, and had always ended up bailing at the first serious argument. He wondered sometimes if maybe he would just never be ready to be in a serious relationship.  
  
But then, he had never felt about anyone before the way he felt about Jamie.  
  
“To you and Jamie” Luke said, holding up his glass to propose a toast. Teddy clinked Luke’s glass with his, smiling.  
  
“May he be that special person in your life, who takes care of you and sorts out all your shit for you. So I don’t fucking have to anymore” Luke grinned.  
  
“Oh please” Teddy replied, smirking. “It would break your heart if you weren’t the one sorting out my shit anymore.”


	10. Of course I read the file

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is where the auror stuff really starts to kick in. I've never written anything in the mystery or crime genre before so please don't judge me too harshly :)

“Are you kidding me with this?” Teddy said without preamble, waving a piece of paper in the air as Harry invited him into his office.  
  
“It’s out of my hands Teddy” Harry said wearily, gesturing for Teddy to sit down. He did so, placing the piece of paper face up on the desk in between them.  
  
“’Placed under the supervision of one of our agents’” Teddy read aloud in disgust. “Under their supervision? Are they serious? I DON’T need to be babysat, Harry!”  
  
“Hermione is really pushing the inter-departmental cooperation thing at the minute” Harry said, holding his hands out as if to say ‘what can I do?’  
  
“And it isn’t _really_ our jurisdiction” he added.  
  
“Bullshit!” Teddy exclaimed. Harry gave him a stern look. “Sorry” he said hastily. “But you know that’s not true – this has dark magic written all over it. This case should be ours.”  
  
“Teddy, I’ve HAD this argument. And I fought for it, believe me I did. But the Department of Non-Violent Crime won’t move an inch. This is the biggest case they’ve had in years. Quite frankly they need it, they’ve had lay-offs left right and centre.”  
  
“How is it ‘non-violent crime’ when we’ve had three bodies so far?” Teddy demanded.  
  
Harry sighed. Teddy knew he must have already had this discussion with about a hundred other people when they were assigning the case. And Teddy knew that Harry wasn’t happy with the outcome so he felt a bit bad for hammering him about it now. But if Teddy was going to be assigned to work under the DNVC for what was sure to be very long and complex case, Harry was damn sure going to explain why.  
  
Harry ran a hand through his hair in frustration.  
  
“The crime scenes aren’t murder scenes. They’re robbery scenes” he said. He didn’t look as though he really believed it and Teddy knew he was just quoting whatever the DNVC had said to the minister that won them the case. “The murders are incidental. There have been three more robberies that have the same MO where no-one was hurt.”  
  
“Six supposed robberies where nothing was taken?” Teddy said, sceptically. “Someone is looking for something, Harry, something they’re willing to kill over. That doesn’t sound like a dark artefact to you? And I don’t believe for a second that the murders aren’t connected. Three of them, all the same age, in the same Hogwarts house at school…”  
  
“Teddy” Harry was getting annoyed now. “Do you not think I said all this myself to the minister? Obviously they’re looking for something, but we have no proof of any dark magic involvement. The murders weren’t even committed with dark magic, the victims were suffocated.”  
  
“Yeah I know, I’ve read the file” Teddy said dismissively.  
  
“Well if you’ve read the file you’ll know that priority number one on this case at the moment is making sure that nothing WAS taken at any of the robberies so far. You’ve seen how these old collectors hide their artefacts - under a whole host of enchantments. We want every inch of these crime scenes going over with a fine toothed comb. And that is much more THEIR expertise than it is ours.”  
  
Teddy had to concede that was true. But that in itself was another reason why he resented having to share jurisdiction with the DNVC: their priorities were a bit skewed in Teddy’s opinion. There was clearly a dangerous wizard out there, they should be hunting him down. Not faffing about looking for stolen magical objects.  
  
Teddy opened his mouth to argue some more, but Harry held up a hand impatiently.  
  
“Look, I don’t like it either” he said. “But until we can prove otherwise, the official position is that these are just robberies.”  
  
“ _Until_ we prove otherwise” Teddy repeated. That day couldn’t come soon enough.  
  
“Why do you think I put YOU in there?” Harry said in an exasperated manner, but smiling in spite of himself. “I need someone on this who’s going to make sure they don’t miss anything. You’re the best detective I’ve got.”  
  
Teddy scowled at Harry, thinking he was flattering Teddy to get him on side. But Harry looked quite sincere. He softened, in spite of himself.  
  
“Bloody hell, alright” he gave in. “But if their agent starts calling me ‘kid’ or ‘sport’, or is condescending to me in any way, this inter-departmental cooperation thing is out of the window” Teddy insisted.  
  
“Duly noted” Harry said, looking amused. “Just try and keep it professional, alright?”  
  
Teddy knew what he was getting at. The Auror office were a little bit of a law unto themselves as far as day-to-day operations went. They were known to have an extremely blasé attitude towards any sort of beaurocracy. Paperwork was always messy and late, non-case-related meetings were poorly attended and they did push their luck a little in bending rules from time-to-time. Harry was largely to blame for this – he had no time for red tape, and prioritised getting the job done over following procedure. His way of working got results though, violent crime and dark-magic activity was at the lowest it had been for over 200 years. But the Auror department did have a reputation for not being able to follow rules and, as a result, not playing well with others. And the whole thing wasn’t helped by the fact that business attire was not enforced in Teddy’s office. On his floor Teddy wasn’t the only one with tattoos or piercings, and people only dressed in proper robes when they were appearing in court. The senior Aurors didn’t care at all about this, but Teddy knew the other departments thought it was unprofessional.  
  
The minister had been trying to whip the aurors into shape ever since she took office, but Teddy supposed it was made difficult by her and Harry being old friends. Harry was certainly selective about which of her instructions he chose to follow. He already knew that whatever stick-up-their-arse DNVC agent was assigned to him would love having this authority over him, and would be quite keen to put him in his place. He sighed heavily. This was going to be a LONG case.  
  
“Oh, and you can thank me later” Harry said, smirking. “If this turns out to be what we think it is, and it becomes the biggest case of the year, and YOU’RE the one heading it up.”  
  
Teddy smiled apologetically. He hadn’t considered that. He had been too angry about working under the DNVC to consider that if jurisdiction were to be turned over to them, Teddy would be the one managing the case. That was actually a pretty huge opportunity. He had never been in charge of a case that big before.  
  
“Thanks Harry” he said a little sheepishly.  
  
-  
  
In an open act of defiance, Teddy turned his hair a bright, shocking pink as walked down a maze of corridors towards the DNVC office to meet his new partner. He was expecting someone around Harry’s age, who would be of the opinion that he could teach the kid a thing or two. Teddy scowled, as he reflected that he would probably have to spend the next week or so proving himself, to some jumped-up, beaurocratic, miserable old-  
  
“Can I help you sweetheart?” The receptionist smiled brightly at him as he approached her desk.  
  
“Yeah, Teddy Lupin. I’m here about the Cambridge robberies case…”  
  
“Hmm, let me see” the receptionist said, going through the stack of notes on her desk. “Oh yes, you want Agent Fisher. I’m afraid she wasn’t expecting you for another couple of hours though, let me just…” She waved her wand the note she was holding folded itself into a little plane and flew down the corridor behind her.  
  
Teddy stood waiting, calmly leaning against the reception desk. The receptionist was eyeing him with interest.  
  
“You’re from the Auror office” she said. It wasn’t a question.  
  
“Um, yeah” Teddy said. He became aware that she was looking at him with a playful smile. In his current bad mood he nearly blurted out ‘I have a boyfriend honey’ but he stopped himself. No need to be rude.  
  
“Did you read the file?” she asked. Teddy was taken aback by the question.  
  
“Of course I read the file” he said, frowning.  
  
“OK, it’s just that Agent Fisher thought it would take a little longer, that’s all” she smiled in an amused sort of way. Teddy understood. She wasn’t checking him out. This agent Fisher, whoever she was, was evidently expecting Teddy to be a complete moron. And Teddy showing up here looking the way he did having only received the file half an hour ago was not inviting confidences. The receptionist was evidently waiting eagerly to see what Fisher was going to say about that.  
  
A note flew back to the receptionist. She opened it and smiled.  
  
“She says I’m to take you through.”  
  
The receptionist led him down the corridor a short way. It looked much like Teddy’s department – mostly private offices but a few meeting rooms, break rooms and a few open plan working spaces. People’s offices were generally much tidier though. And they had less stuff stuck on their walls.  
  
The arrived at Fisher’s office and the receptionist knocked on it, still smiling. A surprisingly young sounding voice told them to enter.  
  
“Teddy Lupin for you” the receptionist said as Teddy followed her into the room. A woman with long dark hair was stood with her back to them perusing a file. She didn’t look up as she said.  
  
“OK. Did you read the file? Because I don’t have time to-“  
  
She turned around and both her and Teddy’s mouths fell open in shock.  
  
“ _Julie?_ ”  
  
“ _Teddy?_ ”  
  
Teddy couldn’t believe it.  
  
He had met her at a coffee shop in Diagon Alley about two years ago. The barista had handed him a coffee and he had just taken it, not realising until Julie accosted him as he was leaving the shop that in fact the cup had her name on it. He had found her attractive and had joked around with her a little, insisting that Julie was his name and it couldn’t possibly be hers. Then when the barista had called out Teddy’s name he had said “That’s your name isn’t it? I think your order is ready.” She had smiled and called him an idiot and he had insisted on buying her a replacement latte.  
  
The next night he had taken her to dinner and they had ended up back at his place. He liked her well enough, but there weren’t really any fireworks. They had done the same thing the next weekend, but it had been much less fun the second time around. Teddy didn’t really know why. She was very pretty and she was funny. She was quite assertive and not afraid to put people in their place, which Teddy liked about her. She was fun to hang out with, and the sex was pretty good. But he just didn’t feel like it was anything special. So he never arranged a third date, and they had never seen each other again. He had no idea she worked at the ministry now; back then she had been working for some insurance company.  
  
“Wow, this is a surprise…” Julie said, smiling in an amused sort of way.  
  
“YEAH it is” Teddy agreed.  
  
Julie tore her gaze away from Teddy to give the receptionist an inquisitive look, who looked disappointed and left, closing to door behind her.  
  
“Long time no see…” Julie said quietly, once they were alone.  
  
It occurred to Teddy that she might be angry at him for never contacting her again after the second date.  
  
“Yeah, listen… sorry I didn’t owl you or anything, I…”  
  
She snorted.  
  
“Oh Teddy, do you really think I still care about that? It was years ago” she waved a hand dismissively as she sunk elegantly down into her chair behind her desk, crossing her legs and leaning back, looking sideways at him.  
  
He breathed a sigh of relief.  
  
“I was NOT expecting to see YOU when I came down here” he said, smiling.  
  
“Let me guess” Julie said, grinning mischievously. “You were expecting a boring old man?”  
  
Teddy laughed.  
  
“Well from the sounds of it, you were expecting a bumbling idiot!” he countered.  
  
“Well now” she said, leaning forward onto the desk. “I don’t know for sure yet that you’re not, do I?"  
  
He laughed again and she smirked.  
  
“Did you read the file though” she asked, seriously.  
  
“Yes, I read the bloody file. I don’t need three hours to read a file!” he said, defensively.  
  
“When I say ‘read it’, I don’t mean giving it a quick once over” she said flatly. “I want you to be familiar with the details before we get into it, I don’t want you interrupting me asking stupid questions.”  
  
She was looking at Teddy appraisingly. He looked back, defiantly.  
  
“Try me” he said.  
  
“Alright” she leaned back in her chair again. “Tell me about the three bodies we’ve got.”  
  
Teddy was pleasantly surprised. She was actually asking him about something important to the case. Something that was HIS area of expertise. Maybe he was going to get a fair crack at this case after all.  
  
“All three of them Ravenclaws” he said. “Aged within three years of each other, which means they were at school at the same time. We’ll need to do more digging to see if there are any other connections, but that alone seems pretty coincidental, doesn’t it?”  
  
“How do you know they’re all Ravenclaws?” Julie asked, surprised.  
  
“Please” Teddy said dismissively. He was vaguely aware that he was showing off but he was pleased by the impressed look on Julie’s face. “Vic number one had a huge picture of an eagle in his living room. Vic two had a Ravenclaw scarf on her coat rack and vic three’s whole house was painted blue. I ran their names through the database and it confirmed it.”  
  
“You did all that before coming down here?” Julie asked, raising her eyebrows.  
  
“I also ran the names of the homeowners for the three clean scenes. Two of them Ravenclaws, one Slytherin. Same age bracket.”  
  
Julie looked very impressed.  
  
“Shame about the Slytherin” she said. “I hate when there’s a break in the pattern.”  
  
Teddy shook his head.  
  
“No, a break in the pattern is good. That means there’s something there. There had to be a reason this group of Ravenclaws knew that Slytherin. That might tell us something about what all the victims have in common. That’s where I think we should start.”  
  
Julie nodded in agreement.


	11. I don’t want to fight about who cares more

Teddy turned the cooker off, sighing in exasperation. James should have been arriving at his flat a full hour ago but there was still no sign of him. Teddy had kept the chilli on a low heat for ages, but most of the liquid had bubbled away and it now looked slightly congealed. There was a simple spell to fix that, but it was the principle of the matter.  
  
James was shit with timekeeping, he always had been. But lately he’d been even worse than usual, coming over later and later. Teddy tried very hard not to take it personally. He knew that James was insanely busy with work at the moment and he was travelling a lot. But Teddy couldn’t help but feel like James just wasn’t making time with Teddy a priority. Maybe that was selfish. But it wasn’t like Teddy wasn’t busy and he still found the time.  
  
He and Julie still hadn’t found the connection between the murder victims, but it wasn’t for lack of trying. It seemed that they had known each other school, but there was no apparent connection between them and the three other people whose homes had been broken into. And there was nothing to suggest that any of them were hiding anything. After a couple of days of working this angle, Julie had declared it a dead end and insisted they go back to looking at the robbery scenes for anything that was missing. Teddy had failed to change her mind, so he himself was working after hours every night trying to find out as much as he could about the victims. This wasn’t the first time a case had demanded long hours from him, but he was working much harder than usual. Julie was surprisingly diligent and had the two of them chasing down leads all day without even stopping for coffee. He was flat out exhausted. But he had left the office at seven and had come home to cook dinner for James regardless. And James couldn’t even be bothered to show up.  
  
He was just thinking of flooing over to James’s house to see what was keeping him, when James finally arrived, climbing out of the fireplace. Teddy was about to make a scathing remark about his lateness, but stopped short when he saw the bandage on James’s arm.  
  
“What happened?” he asked, rushing over to James to examine him.  
  
“Acromantula bite” James said, quite calmly, smiling at Teddy’s concern. “Don’t worry, it’s fine. Their venom prevents you healing it with magic so I’ve got to wait for it to heal the old fashioned way. But apart from that it’s just a normal cut.”  
  
“Just a normal cut?” Teddy repeated sceptically. The bandage was covering James’s entire lower arm, and there were two large bloody puncture marks distinctly visible through the bandages.  
  
“It’s fine” James repeated, dismissively.  
  
“What were you doing messing with acromantula anyway?” Teddy asked sternly. James laughed.  
  
“Just another day at the office, Teddy. We were raiding a tomb in Vietnam which turned out to be in their territory. We were really pleased with ourselves too, breaking through all the ancient wizard enchantments, and then these massive fucking spiders start crawling all around the sides of the building.”  
  
Teddy frowned at him, but he really did seem to be alright. Teddy hadn’t realised quite how dangerous James’s new job was going to be until he had started going out into the field. Apparently curse breakers believed in learning on the job, so they just threw him into these situations to see whether he would sink or swim. He was always with a team of more experienced wizards, because he was still a trainee after all. But Teddy still worried about him.  
  
“Is that why you’re late then?” Teddy asked. He imagined James’s mum fussing over him.  
  
“What? Oh no, I just lost track of time. This happened days ago…”  
  
Teddy felt his annoyance at James return. Not only because he was late for no reason, but also because he’d been bitten by a fucking acromantula and hadn’t even told Teddy about it.  
  
“Well, I made chilli but it’s overcooked now. I’ll need to sort it” Teddy said moodily, sloping back towards the kitchen.  
  
“ _Hey_ ” James said softly, grabbing his hand and pulling him back. “Sorry I’m late” he said, giving Teddy a gentle kiss.  
Teddy felt his anger lessen a little. He gave James a begrudging smile and then went to sort the food out.

-

They ate in silence for a while, before James tentatively asked:  
  
“Are you angry with me?”  
  
“No, I’m not angry” Teddy said wearily. “I’m fucking exhausted. Work is kind of crazy at the minute…”  
  
“Yeah, for me too” James said gently. “I don’t mean to be so late all the time, it’s just, I’m in a different country every other day. I don’t even know what time zone I’m in half the time.”  
  
Teddy gave him a weak smile. He supposed that was a pretty reasonable excuse. His eyes lingered on James’s bandage again.  
  
“I get that” he said. “Tell me, next time you get attacked by something dangerous though, OK?” he added seriously.  
  
“THAT’S what you’re annoyed about?” James asked. “I told you, it’s not a big deal!”  
  
“I SAID I’m not angry” Teddy snapped. He wasn’t sure that that was true. He did feel annoyed. But he was conscious of the fact that being so tired was making him overly sensitive. So he didn’t want to argue because he knew he was liable to be unreasonable. And he just didn’t have the energy for it anyway.  
  
“Well you obviously are!” James retorted angrily. Apparently they were going to argue whether Teddy wanted to or not. “Fuck, Teddy, I’m not going to sit here all night with you pouting at me like that, just fucking say whatever you want to say, I’m too tired for this…”  
  
“I’M too tired for this!” Teddy exclaimed. “Fuck Jamie, all I’ve wanted all week is just to relax with you and then you’re fucking late, like you don’t even care, and you show up with a fucking bite on your arm that you didn’t tell me about!”  
  
“Of course I fucking care, Jesus, I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want you to worry. That’s how much I care!”  
  
“YOU don’t get to decide whether I worry or not!” Teddy was shouting now.  
  
James’s eyes narrowed in concern at this. He looked mildly annoyed, but when he spoke it was quite calmly.  
  
“Teddy, this is stupid, I don’t want to fight about who cares more…” he said. “I’m sorry OK?”  
  
Teddy softened at his words and all the fight went out of him.  
  
“I’m sorry too” he said. 

-

They were increasingly bickering like this, and Teddy hated it. They had been together for three months now, which made this on par with the longest relationship Teddy had ever had in his life. And he had known that it was going to happen sooner or later, that he and James were going to have a fight. But his past experience of fighting with a boyfriend or girlfriend had always been huge blow-out rows in which they had screamed all sorts of horrible things at each other. He was glad that he and Jamie didn’t seem to be going down that route, because he didn’t WANT to fight with Jamie like that, he really didn’t. But maybe that would have been better than this: constant sniping at each other and low level resentment. He didn’t like it at all. He felt like it was eroding their relationship – slowly eating away at their affection for each other. And he tried SO HARD not to do it. But James was increasingly short-tempered, as he got increasingly exhausted from work. And Teddy was increasingly finding himself snapping back, unable to rise above it. And now of course Teddy was tired and agitated because of work too.  
  
He suggested that they watch some TV in bed after dinner and James agreed that that was a good idea. Ordinarily Teddy would levitate heavy objects from room to room, but he couldn’t cast magic on the TV without damaging the electrical circuits, so he picked it up and started to carry it through.  
  
“Here, let me do that” James said, taking it from him. Teddy looked appreciatively at his flexing biceps as he did so. Teddy wasn’t exactly scrawny himself, but his bulk was nothing compared to James’s, who still hadn’t lost his quidditch player’s physique.  
  
“Show off” he muttered and James grinned.  
  
Teddy went to the bathroom leaving James to sort out the TV. When he went into the bedroom James was lying on the bed with his eyes closed, having put the TV down on the chest of drawers but not plugged it into anything (James’s understanding of muggle tech wasn’t quite as advanced as Teddy’s).  
  
“Hey” Teddy said softly, lying on the bed next to him and wrapping an arm around him. “Don’t you fall asleep before I’ve had chance to cuddle you.”  
  
James laughed sleepily, but didn’t open his eyes.  
  
“I don’t know what I’m supposed to do with the TV” he muttered, his words slurring slightly. “There’s wires and things…”  
  
“Forget that” Teddy said gently, kissing the top of James’s head. This was nice. He felt guilty, for being so irritable earlier. He also felt mildly guilty for getting on his high horse about James’s injury and him not telling Teddy about it, in light of the fact that he himself was currently keeping something from James.  
  
It wasn’t that he didn’t WANT to tell him about Julie, it was just awkward. Listening to Teddy’s friends talk you would think he used to go home with a different person every night. Whilst that wasn’t entirely accurate, Teddy couldn’t deny that he had slept around a fair amount in his early twenties. James knew about this of course. Fuck, he had BEEN there for half of it, in the later years. He and James had had ridiculous, childish competitions from time to time, about who could kiss the most people in one night, or which one of them could pull a particular stranger. It had been harmless enough, and they were fond memories that the two of them laughed about now. But it made Teddy very uncomfortable to think about Jamie being properly intimate with anyone else. And he assumed that went both ways. And even though he trusted James, he knew that he wouldn’t like it if he found out James was working so closely with an ex.  
  
Teddy knew he should tell James. But, it wasn’t the sort of news that you could drop in an owl. It was something he wanted to tell him about face to face. But the subject hadn’t really come up tonight. And Teddy hadn’t wanted to BRING it up when they were already arguing.  
  
And now James was asleep. He didn’t want to disturb him just to start another argument.  
  
He felt the guilt bite at him as he got undressed and climbed into bed properly, next to James. He knew that he was making excuses not to have the conversation. But he just couldn’t face it tonight.


	12. There’s been another one

James was stood behind Teddy in the kitchen the next morning, with his arms around Teddy’s waist, planting distracting kisses on his neck while Teddy was trying to make them a cup of tea. He was swatting James away and protesting, but couldn’t help himself from laughing, which only encouraged James to do it even more.  
  
They sprang apart however as they heard the roar of the fire behind them. They turned around and saw Harry’s head there. Teddy felt blind panic for a second, but Harry didn’t seem to have noticed anything. And he didn’t seem surprised to see James there. Teddy supposed that even before they were dating, James was round his place most weekends anyway.  
  
“Hi boys” he said, calmly. “Teddy – I’m sorry to do this to you on a Saturday, but there’s been another one.”  
  
“Another robbery?” Teddy asked, moving closer to the fireplace and forgetting about everything else entirely.  
  
“Another murder” Harry said darkly. Teddy crouched down next to the fireplace.  
  
“Another school friend?” he asked seriously.  
  
“No, a historian who published his last three papers on the lost diadem of Ravenclaw…”  
  
“Fuck…”  
  
Teddy usually refrained from swearing in front of his godfather, as a sign of respect. But he lost all concept of his surroundings at this news. This was interesting. Very interesting. And this meant the case was MUCH bigger than any of them had ever thought.  
  
“We need to interview Helena” he told Harry urgently.  
  
“Already did” Harry said calmly. “She denies knowing anything about it, but I’m not convinced… She won’t talk to the ministry though, she still hasn’t forgiven me for destroying it.”  
  
“It’s definitely destroyed then?” Teddy asked.  
  
“Definitely. The pieces were never recovered after the Battle of Hogwarts so we assumed they’d been sold on the black market to some collector. But it didn’t seem to matter – magically, they were completely useless.”  
  
“Helena confirmed that?”  
  
“She was evasive about it. But I don’t see how there could be anything still useful about it, the horcrux in it was destroyed, we know THAT for sure…”  
  
Teddy nodded, deep in thought.  
  
“I want to speak to her myself” he said finally.  
  
“I know” Harry said. “That’s why the urgency, she’s waiting in McGonagall’s office now. And she’s not happy about it.”  
  
Teddy nodded and stood back up. He suddenly realised that James was still there.  
  
“Oh, Jamie, I…”  
  
James shook his head.  
  
“It’s fine” he said. “Go. It sounds important.”  
  
Teddy nodded seriously.  
  
“You’ve arranged the floo connection?” he added, to Harry.  
  
“Yes, but from my office, so you’ll have to come here first.”  
  
Teddy nodded. It would have been an insane lapse in security to allow a floo connection between someone’s private home and Hogwarts.  
  
“OK, give me five minutes to get myself together” Teddy told Harry. He was still wearing shorts and the t-shirt he had slept in.  
  
“OK” Harry said, with an air of finality.  
  
“Wait!” Teddy cried, before he disappeared. “Have you called Julie in?” he asked.  
  
“SHE was the one who called me in” Harry laughed. “She’s not happy, because she knows this means they have to turn the case over to us.”  
  
Teddy frowned. This was good news obviously, but Julie was undeniably good at what she did, and very driven. She was probably the first one on the scene because she’d have popped into the office this morning to run down a lead. It would be a shame to lose her input.  
  
“We can keep her on though can’t we?” Teddy asked.  
  
“If you want” Harry said, looking surprised at this. “It’s still a missing artefacts case I suppose…”  
  
Teddy nodded.  
  
“OK, I’ll be there in five” he said, and Harry’s head disappeared from the fire.  
  
Teddy walked quickly into the bedroom, grabbing some clothes from the wardrobe. There was no time to shower.  
  
“How come you didn’t tell me about the case?” James asked, following him in. “Sounds pretty major.”  
  
“I’ve only been on it since Monday” Teddy told him. “And to be honest there really wasn’t much to tell until now. It just got about a thousand times more major.”  
  
That was certainly true. It had been a fairly big case even when they didn’t know what artefact they were hunting. But now… They weren’t only tracking an artefact of incredible historical significance and magical power. They were also tracking an artefact that had connections to Voldemort. Yes, this was very major. Teddy knew there was no way he was going to be heading up this case now. Nor would he particularly want to, not if it had death eater connections. That was way over his head. No, Harry would be getting directly involved in this. But that in itself was pretty significant, career-wise, Teddy mused. Most of the junior Aurors would kill to be working directly with Harry. The man was a living legend after all.  
  
“Who’s Julie” James asked casually, interrupting Teddy’s train of thought.  
  
“What?” Teddy said, startled. “Oh… she’s…”  
  
He didn’t want to get into this right now, when he had to be out of here in a few minutes. This wasn’t the right time to drop that news. Especially since he had just asked Harry right in front of James if he could keep working with her. He didn’t want to have to try and explain that and justify himself. He had no romantic feeling towards Julie at all, but he knew it wasn’t going to sound that way in light of their history.  
  
“She’s from the DNVC” Teddy said, not looking at him. “I got partnered with her because this case was given to them. We thought we were just looking for a burglar…”  
  
“DNVC?” James asked, confused.  
  
Teddy smiled in spite of himself. Maybe Harry had a point about the acronyms.  
  
“Department of Non Violent Crime” Teddy explained, as he laced up his boots. “I’m sorry Jamie, I really have to go, they’re waiting for me.”  
  
“OK” James said, giving him a quick peck on the lips and walking with him back to the fireplace. “Good luck, go and save the world” he said, as Teddy grabbed a handful of floo powder.  
  
“Thanks” he smiled. “And don’t you get savaged by any more monsters while I’m gone!”  
  
He threw the powder into the fire, calling out ‘Ministry of Magic’ as he stepped into it.


	13. Proceed with caution

The interview with Helena Ravenclaw was entirely fruitless. Teddy knew that if Harry couldn’t get her to talk then there was no way he could. But he wouldn’t be doing his job if he didn’t try. He even let Julie have a crack at it, thinking perhaps the two of them talking woman-to-woman might help – a softer touch, as it were. Julie was entirely the wrong person to choose for this unfortunately. Her no-nonsense attitude rubbed Helena up completely the wrong way, and Teddy and Harry had to intervene when they heard the two of them yelling at each other from outside (Julie saying something like ‘do you not understand how serious this is, you silly girl!’).  
  
Helena had spoken mostly in riddles, and refused to give straight answers to their questions, becoming haughty and condescending when they asked for clarification. Harry was right, she was being particularly evasive about whether the broken diadem had any residual magical value, but she did concede that there was no way it would work in the same way it used to anymore. She denied knowing any of the murder victims, saying dismissively that thousands of students had passed through this school and she couldn’t be expected to remember them all. And she had been rather rude about the recently departed historian. She seemed to find it insulting that the man had been digging into what she considered to be private family matters.  
  
She had clammed up entirely when asked about Voldemort, insisting that this was a grave insult, to suggest the Ravenclaw family had any involvement in dark magic and refusing to say another word about it. Teddy rather felt like the whole thing had been a waste of time, but he thanked her for her time and patience anyway (not that she had been particularly generous with either of those things) and McGonagall dismissed her.  
  
They had then had a very serious discussion with McGonagall about Hogwarts security. They knew the diadem wasn’t there – keen historians and seedy treasure hunters alike had scoured the ruins of the castle following the battle to recover every last artefact. Even those without any magic whatsoever were still worth a fortune – a broken chair that was proven to have been hit by a killing curse fired from Bellatrix Lestrange’s wand recently sold at auction for over a hundred-thousand galleons. Teddy rather thought that Harry could be a millionaire if he sold half the stuff in his attic. But Harry didn’t like the idea of someone fawning over things that had such deeply negative personal connotations to him.  
  
Yes, there was no way the diadem was still at Hogwarts. But that didn’t mean no-one would show up there looking for it.  
  
Much of what both Teddy and Harry considered to be ‘time wasting’ ensued. There was a meeting with the minister herself, regarding the new development. There was then a meeting with the head of the DNVC, who officially turned the case over to the Auror office. The minister had sternly supervised them while they went through the bare minimum of the associated paperwork for this. Harry then immediately called a meeting for everyone in the Auror office. A couple more people were brought in on the case and everyone else was assigned to Hogwarts security on top of their existing workload. Fortunately, it was very nearly the summer holidays, so student safety was only a major concern for the next fortnight.  
  
Harry had agreed to continue working collaboratively with the DNVC, keeping Julie on as Teddy’s partner. They three of them had then gone to visit the latest crime scene but they hadn’t expected to glean any new information from this and they were right. None of the neighbours had seen or heard anything. The victim had been suffocated and had shown no signs of fighting back. The house had been ransacked but nothing appeared to be missing.  
  
It had been a very long day, so when Harry asked Teddy if he was coming for dinner, he politely declined to go home and fall into bed. On Sunday he floo-called the Potters, asking if James wanted to come over, but he was off playing quidditch with some old school friends.  
  
Teddy went back to bed to watch TV there (he hadn’t moved it since Friday night), feeling resentful. It wasn’t Jamie’s fault, he probably had told Teddy that he was busy today and Teddy had forgotten. And they had been planning to spend all day on Saturday together, before Teddy got called into work. But it had ended up being another fucking weekend where they had barely seen each other and they had argued for half the time that they had.

-

The case stretched on for weeks without any new developments. They now knew what the perpetrator was looking for, but in the grand scheme of things that wasn’t really very important. What they needed to know was who this person was, what they intended to do with the diadem once they got it, and where they were looking for it now.  
  
Harry was working the death eater angle, tracking down anyone with connections to the old horcruxes and anyone who might be interested in dark artefacts in general. He also paid a few visits to Azkaban to interview old death eaters. He had taken Teddy on one of these trips and it had been a harrowing experience that Teddy wouldn’t soon forget.  
  
He was struggling to find anything there though. In fact, it was looking increasingly likely that this person was hunting the diadem for some magical properties that it still had, rather than anything to do with it being a horcrux. This was the angle that Teddy and Julie were working. Teddy was focused on the murders, and what damning evidence the four victims could all have known about which meant they had to die. Julie was simply working it as a missing artefacts case and doing her best to track down the diadem, interviewing historians and collectors.  
  
Today, the three of them were paying a visit to Luna Scamander, for reasons Harry hadn’t satisfactorily explained to Teddy. He had said that the person he really wanted to talk to was Xenophilius Lovegood, but the man had passed away a few years back now. So they were going to talk to his daughter. Teddy knew that she was a Ravenclaw, and she was another old friend of Harry’s from school. But he had no idea why she might know anything about this. He was also a bit wary of this woman in general, as the Potters had always affectionately described her as being ‘a bit odd.’ Although Ginny did say she was less so, these days, since getting married. Teddy had met her once or twice when he was younger, but he didn’t remember much about her apart from the bizarre fashion choices.  
  
Luna had been expecting them. She was out in the front garden wearing a wide brimmed, floppy hat and tending to a plant (which she appeared to be feeding live mice to), but otherwise looking quite normal. She greeted them as they arrived at her house.  
  
“Hello Harry… and other aurors” she said, in a rather dreamy voice. “Do come in” she added, standing up and vanishing the bag of mice. “I’ll make some tea.”  
  
“No gurdyroots, though?” Harry asked warily, and she laughed.  
  
“No, just normal tea” she said, leading them into the kitchen, which was decorated with very bright paintings of all sorts of magical creatures. Some of the pictures featured what appeared to be Luna herself, and a blonde man who Teddy supposed was her husband. She took off her hat and stuck her wand behind one of her ears while she made the tea.  
  
“Rolf has taken the boys fishing” Luna said to Harry, bringing a tea tray complete with a small selection of cakes, over to the table. “So we can talk freely.”  
  
She sat down at the table with them, looking at Teddy with surprising intensity. He felt a little flustered, wondering why she was examining him with such interest.  
  
“You’re Teddy Lupin” she said. Teddy didn’t know what to say to that, so he simply nodded, wishing she would stop looking at him.  
  
“Your father was the best defence teacher we ever had when we were at Hogwarts” she said, smiling. Teddy was a little taken aback by this. It was a nice thing to say, but strangers were usually a bit tentative about mentioning Teddy’s father to him, given that he was dead. He also wasn’t really sure what he was supposed to do with this information. He thought he knew what Ginny meant when she said that Luna was ‘harmlessly eccentric’. He gave her a sort of half-smile back.  
  
“You’re not sure what to make of me” she said, sounding amused. Teddy again had no idea what to say to this, but was fortunately saved the trouble of having to respond, as she then turned to Harry.  
  
“What did you want to ask me Harry?” She asked, calmly.  
  
“I’m here about the diadem” Harry replied seriously. Luna seemed surprised by this.  
  
“The real one?” she asked. Teddy thought that was a weird question. How many fake ones were out there?  
  
“Yes” Harry said smiling in amusement for a second, before reverting back to seriousness. “The real one. We have reason to believe someone is trying to track it down.”  
  
“Someone dangerous?” Luna asked, but Teddy could tell from her tone she already knew the answer. Why else would they be here?  
  
Harry paused for a second. Teddy knew he was wondering how much to say. You weren’t really supposed to give details of an ongoing investigation to a civilian. But evidently Harry trusted her, because he said, quietly:  
  
“They’ve killed four people.”  
  
This news didn’t seem to trouble Luna, who looked more thoughtful than concerned as she leaned her head onto one hand, elbow on the table. She titled her head sideways, scrunching up her mouth.  
  
“You’ve spoken to Helena, of course?” she said, addressing Harry. He nodded.  
  
“She wouldn’t give us anything. But she also wouldn’t give us a straight answer about whether it still has any useable magic” he told her. A look of dawning realisation formed on Luna’s face.  
  
“You’ve come here to ask if Daddy knew anything about it?” she said. She was frowning at Harry rather seriously, in an unnerving shift from her breezy manner thus far.  
  
“He was right about the hallows, Luna” Harry said quietly, not breaking eye contact. Teddy had no idea what they were going on about now, but he knew that it was important so he continued to sit silently and watch them talk, as if Teddy and Julie weren’t even there.  
  
“He was wrong about a lot of other things though, Harry” Luna said even more quietly, with the slightest hint of anger in her voice. The tension in the room was palpable. She and Harry were still locked in a staring contest. Teddy didn’t know how Harry could stand it, her gaze was piercing. Intense. As though she could see right through you.  
  
After what felt like ages, Luna gave a heavy sigh and got up from the table, waving her wand and conjuring several boxes of thick, leather bound books. They appeared to be journals of some sort, with hand written notes stuck out every few pages.  
  
“The diadem was a particular fascination of Daddy’s, as you know” she said to Harry. “There’s a lot. And I don’t know how much of it is anything meaningful.”  
  
“That doesn’t matter” Harry said gratefully. “Thanks, Luna, this will be a big help.”  
  
“Perhaps” she replied, enigmatically. “Was there anything else?”  
  
“I don’t think so” he said. “Unless there’s anything you can think of?”  
  
This surprised Teddy. Harry was the head of the Auror office – a figure of high authority, who was always the one issuing instructions to others when they were at work. The only other person Teddy had ever seen him talk to like this about a work-related matter was the minister. He was asking for Luna’s opinion, as though this were a casual matter and not a highly complex (not to mention confidential) case. What insight could she have, anyway? She was a magizoologist, wasn’t she?  
  
Luna looked pensive again for a minute.  
  
“The inscription” she said finally.  
  
Harry, Teddy and Julie all looked confusedly back at her, which, if that was Teddy, would have made him feel stupid. She was entirely unabashed however, and she looked between the three of them, quite calmly.  
  
“The horcrux was destroyed, so the diadem can’t be used for its magic anymore. So if I had to guess why someone wants it I’d say it’s because there’s something ON it. Look at the inscription” she said.  
  
Teddy’s lips parted in shock. He felt very much like he had just been schooled. That was brilliant. Something written ON it, of course! Fucking hell, three highly skilled agents, one of whom was head of the department, and they hadn’t thought of that!  
  
“Xenophilius has some thoughts on this, I assume?” Harry enquired and Luna nodded.  
  
“It’s all in there” she gestured to the boxes. “Just be careful not to get stuck on a wild snorkack chase, OK?” she added.  
  
“You know me Luna, I never do anything rash” Harry grinned and she laughed.

-

They left Luna’s shortly after this, Harry having sent the boxes ahead to the ministry by magic and making Luna promise to bring the boys over for dinner sometime. It had been a long way to go for what had ended up being quite a short conversation, in Teddy’s opinion. He rather thought they ought to ask Luna some more questions. But Teddy wouldn’t have known what questions to ask, since he had no idea what she knew. And if Harry thought there was nothing more to be gained regarding their case from her then Teddy supposed he was probably right. She was HIS friend after all.  
  
He was still quite confused by the whole thing though.  
  
“Harry, what did you mean when you said ‘he was right about the hallows’?” Teddy asked. This appeared to have meant something very significant to both Harry and Luna but Teddy couldn’t make head or tails of it.  
  
“That’s not important” Harry said, not unkindly, but rather dismissively. Teddy doubted that very much, but accepted that it wasn’t relevant to the case.  
  
“I want to see you two in my office, when we get back” Harry said, before they disapparated.

-

Teddy supposed it was simply to divide up the journals and agree on a plan of action, but Harry looked rather serious once they all arrived back at his office and told Teddy and Julie to sit down. The boxes were stacked up next to Harry’s desk. He edged around them and took a seat.  
  
“It’s important that you understand” Harry said, slowly. He seemed to be struggling to articulate whatever he wanted to say. “Xenophilius was… a strange man.”  
  
Teddy could believe that, if his daughter was anything to go by. He glanced at Julie, who was looking back at him in a mildly amused way, clearly thinking the same. Harry seemed to be talking about something more than social awkwardness though, so Teddy waited for him to elaborate.  
  
“He was sort of a conspiracy theorist… he believed all these strange things – like, I’m sure you’ve heard about Luna and Rolf’s expedition to find the crumple horned snorkack?”  
  
Teddy nodded. This had been a medium-sized news story at the time, due to Luna’s residual fame from the war and Rolf’s reputation and legacy as a serious magizoologist. It was regarded widely as a joke and Teddy had thought himself it was probably a publicity stunt of some kind, to promote their new book.  
  
“Well, Luna grew up believing all these stupid things, because her father just went around saying them like they were true” Harry was frowning now. Teddy remembered the hint of anger in Luna’s voice earlier.  
  
“Luna’s been struggling her whole life to get people to take her seriously, and with good reason” Harry said seriously.  
  
“Why are we taking his journals seriously then?” Julie asked bluntly. Teddy thought it was a fair question.  
  
“Because he was right once. About something pretty significant” Harry said. “Something everyone else thought was just a fairy tale, or a wild-goose chase. No-one else believed him, not even me at first. But he was right.”  
  
Teddy was itching to ask more about these hallows, whatever they were. But Harry had already told him to drop it, and this wasn’t the time or the place.  
  
“You think he might be right again?” Julie asked.  
  
“I’m saying – proceed with caution” Harry said carefully. “There might be something here, there might not be. Don’t take anything you read as fact, I want you backing up your sources with all those historians we’ve already interviewed.”  
  
Teddy nodded. He understood. It would be very tempting to get sucked in if they found something in these journals that seemed to solve the whole case. But these journals could just as easily contain nothing other than the ravings of a mad man. They didn’t want to waste time chasing after something that didn’t exist.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I lovelovelove Luna, she is one of my favourite characters from the original and I'm not sure I entirely did her justice here, but I couldn't leave her out.


	14. Not even a pissing name, just ‘man in Skegness'

Once they started reading the journals, Teddy hardly thought Harry’s warning had been necessary. These were quite clearly the ravings of an absolute madman. Teddy was no historian, but he had never seen such sloppy research. Xenophilius wrote down the most ridiculous things as though they were undeniably true. And he seemed to take the vaguest anecdotal evidence as substantiary proof. He finished reading a particularly outlandish chapter about how the diadem had been routinely doused in the blood of virgins to enhance its mindfulness properties and threw the journal down on the desk in exasperation.  
  
He was leaned back in his chair with his legs crossed, resting on top of his desk. Julie was sat on the floor of his office, a large number of notes on scraps of old parchment laid out in front of her. She had taken off her high heeled shoes and was sat neatly, folded at the knees with her legs to one side. She was unable to sit cross legged due to those pencil skirts she always wore. She was bent over the notes in front of her, her long, straight dark brown hair falling in a curtain, almost sweeping the floor.  
  
Teddy was rather taken aback by the fact that he found the sight of her sitting there like that mildly alluring. He gave his head a little shake. Fuck, it had been FAR too long since he last had sex. He and Jamie kept missing each other due to Teddy’s erratic work hours and James’s travelling. He took a deep breath and let it out slowly.  
  
“Open the door a little would you?” Teddy asked Julie. “It’s hot as hell in here.”  
  
He wasn’t wrong. It was now August and the weather was baking hot outside. They were miles underground, but the magical ventilation system varied seasonally with the weather to accommodate people’s dressing habits. And it was hot down here.  
  
“Actually I was just about to suggest going and getting a coke or something” she said, sighing and looking up at him. “I can’t look at these fucking notes anymore. Look at this one!” she picked one up and held it out to Teddy. He couldn’t read it from where he was sitting, so she read it out to him. “’Man in Skegness confirms inscription made by vampire fang’ – are you kidding me?!” Teddy laughed at her outrage, and also at the ridiculousness of the claim.  
  
“’Man in Skegness’, what we just take his word for it do we? Not even a pissing name, just ‘man in Skegness’!” she was shaking her head, apparently torn between amusement and frustration. “and ‘by vampire fang’? Really? Was the fang in the vampire’s mouth at the time, do you reckon?”  
  
Teddy cracked up and Julie couldn’t help but join in.  
  
“Come on” Teddy said, standing up. “I’ll buy you a coke, before we both lose our fucking minds.”

-

The break room was even hotter than Teddy’s office, so they retired back to his office but left the door ajar to tray and air the room out a bit. They were still laughing about their findings, none of which so far had been anything short of ludicrous.  
  
Julie sat back down on the floor, sweeping her hair back out of her face.  
  
“You don’t have to sit of the floor, you know” Teddy said. “I’ll make space at my desk.”  
  
“No, it’s OK” Julie said casually, leaning back against the wall. “I like to spread out. Besides, I’ve got a system going over here” she gestured to the notes in front of her. Teddy couldn’t see any discernable pattern, but then, these notes weren’t exactly easy to sort into categories. Anyway, he had no room to talk, his own organisational skills left a lot to be desired.  
  
He sat cross legged next to her and looked at the notes spread out across the floor. They all contained some mention of the inscription, and reading them from right to left they seemed to become slightly more believable and less ridiculous.  
  
“You’re ordering them by credibility?” he asked.  
  
“Well, trying to” Julie smiled. “Would you rate ‘inscription read backwards will reveal location of fountain of youth’ as more or less credible than ‘applying unicorn tears to inscription reveals spell for predicting future’?”  
  
Teddy sighed. It wasn’t really an easy task, sorting out what was just about plausible enough to even bother asking the historians about. He thought they could safely say the vampire fang thing was nonsense. But those last two? Teddy had no idea if either of those were even remotely possible or if they were going to be laughed out of the building for even suggesting it.  
  
“Do you think Harry’s having any luck?” she asked, when Teddy didn’t answer.  
  
Teddy laughed, imagining Harry’s frustration at having to sort through this shit. He would be swearing like a trooper up in his own office right now, Teddy was willing to bet.  
  
“I’ll be surprised if he actually has the patience to get through the whole box” Teddy grinned. “He’ll probably send them down to us when he’s had enough.”  
  
Julie smiled.  
  
“Yay” she said sarcastically. “More fun for us.”  
  
She looked at Teddy and her smile changed to one of sincerity.  
  
“I don’t think I ever thanked you by the way. For keeping me on this case” she said quietly. “I assume that WAS you?”  
  
Teddy was slightly disconcerted the sudden change of subject.  
  
“Oh, um… yeah, it was. You’re a good partner” he shrugged. “You know, for a DNVC drone” he added cheekily. She smirked back at him.  
  
“I suppose you’re alright too. For a smart-arse.”  
  
They grinned at each other.  
  
“I knew Harry wouldn’t see any value in keeping me on” Julie said, sweeping her hair out of her face again. “And I thought, you know, with our… history…”  
  
Teddy shuffled in his seat awkwardly. This was the first time either of them had brought that up since that first day he went down to her office.  
  
“I suggested keeping you on, but Harry didn’t fight it” Teddy told her. “He said it was still a missing artefacts case so it would be good to have you around still. And as far as me and you goes… It’s not a big deal, right? I mean, it was ages ago. We went out, it didn’t work out” he shrugged.  
  
“It didn’t work out for YOU” she said pointedly. “You’re right, it doesn’t matter now, but… I would have liked a third date…”  
  
She was looking at him entirely unembarrassed. Teddy remembered liking that about her, when they had gone out. She wasn’t afraid to be bold.  
  
Teddy didn’t know what to say.  
  
“It wasn’t that I didn’t like you” Teddy said, honestly. “I guess I just… wasn’t really looking for anything, then.”  
  
“OK” Julie said, seeming perfectly fine with this. “I didn’t scare you off then?” she smiled.  
  
“No, of course not. You were great. You’re still great. I just… I dunno” he shrugged. The truth was he felt like what they had had together was nothing extraordinary. But it seemed unnecessarily harsh to say that.  
  
Just then, Harry knocked on the door. He was stood outside in the corridor, but since the door was half open they could see him stood there.  
  
SHIT, Teddy thought. How much of that did he hear?  
  
“Hey Harry” Teddy said, as casually as he could, uncomfortably aware of how close he was sitting to Julie.  
  
Harry looked a little out of sorts himself. Shit, he had DEFINITELY heard something. Teddy racked his brains, trying the recall what he and Julie had just said and exactly how damning it was.  
  
“I came to tell you I’m officially declaring this a waste of time” Harry said after a long pause. “Or at least, I’M not wasting any more time on it.” Teddy saw Julie grin at him out of the corner of his eye. “I still want you two to go through it all, but only follow something up if it’s really possible. If it’s already backed up by a RELIABLE source.”  
  
“OK, sure” Julie said calmly. Teddy nodded.  
  
“I’ll send you the other box down” Harry said, giving the pair of them a scrutinizing look before walking away again, back down the corridor.  
  
“Shit, do you think he heard?” Teddy asked, standing up to close the door and to make sure Harry was out of earshot.  
  
“So what if he did?” Julie shrugged. “We went on two dates, like, what, a year ago? Shocker.”  
  
“Yeah but I don’t want him to think there’s anything going on with us now” Teddy said. Julie shrugged again, clearly not troubled by this. Her lack of reaction was making Teddy calm down a bit. Well, there WASN’T anything going on, was there? They had nothing to hide.  
  
“OK, I’m going to get rid of everything on THIS side” Julie said, holding her arm out over the notes and making a sweeping gesture. Teddy had a look at where she was drawing the line. The thing about the unicorn tears was still on the ‘keep’ side of it.  
  
“Move a few inches to your right and I agree”, Teddy said, smiling.


	15. Don’t fuck it up if you can help it

“Teddy, you look like shit” Luke said, quite calmly, as Teddy brushed soot off his clothes having just climbed out of his fireplace.  
  
“Thank you, for THAT” Teddy said, laughing. “It’s nice to see you too.”  
  
“It’s not nice to see you, you look like a fucking inferius” Luke said smiling mischievously, handing him a beer. “When was the last time you slept?”  
  
“Is mother hen worried about me?” Teddy said, pouting. Luke laughed.  
  
“Well someone has to, don’t they. Speaking of, Jamie not with you?”  
  
Teddy scowled.  
  
“No, he bailed. Just got back from Bermuda and he’s shattered _apparently_ ” Teddy had meant to be flippant about it, but there was clear resentment in his voice.  
  
Luke narrowed his eyes in concern.  
  
“You two are OK, right?” he asked, uncharacteristically serious.  
  
Teddy sighed.  
  
“Fuck, I dunno, man” he said, taking a swig of the beer and sinking down onto the sofa. “It’s like, on the rare occasion I DO get a day off he’s never fucking here, you know?”  
  
“So take more days off” Luke said sternly.  
  
Teddy looked at him defiantly. He had expected Luke to be on his side. But then, he mused, that wouldn’t be like Luke at all. Luke was never on anyone’s side. Luke was on the side of reason, always.  
  
“Now’s not really a good time for that” he sighed.  
  
“OK fine” Luke said, calmly. “But you can’t expect Jamie to schedule himself around you. He has a job too. And he’s not used to it yet. You remember what it was like, when you first started the nine-to-five after years of pissing around doing nothing. You remember how much of a shock to the system that was?”  
  
Teddy smiled. He couldn’t deny that. It had taken him about six months to adjust to waking up at the same time every day, and doing a full day at work, five days a week. He had been dead on his feet the entire time. He hadn’t helped himself by burning the candle at both ends though, still trying to go out clubbing every weekend.  
  
“And he’s still playing a lot of quidditch” Luke added. “He misses it, you know?”  
  
Teddy frowned. Why was it that Luke knew more about Jamie’s life than he did?  
  
“Is that what you invited me over here for?” He asked, accusingly. “To tell me I’m being a shit boyfriend? And how do YOU know so much about it anyway?”  
  
“He’s MY friend too, Teddy” Luke said, looking at him sternly again. “And no, I invited you over here because I’m a fucking concerned mother hen. Jamie said you’re burning yourself out and he’s fucking right, look at the state of you.”  
  
“Would you fuck off with that?” Teddy said irritably, but he smiled in spite of himself. Luke was the only person in the world who could get away with talking to him like that. Except maybe Jamie.  
  
“Things are just kind of crazy right now” he said, stretching his back by arching forward slightly and yawning. He couldn’t tell Luke specifics about the case for security reasons. Not that he didn’t trust Luke. But it was a pointless risk. “It’s a really big case. A LOT of fieldwork. AND deskwork. AND meetings. Just, a lot of everything really.”  
  
“Yeah, Jamie eluded to it being pretty high profile” Luke said, waving dismissively, as though this was beside the point. “Said you’re working directly with the big man himself. And you’ve got a new partner?”  
  
Teddy’s insides squirmed with guilt at that. He still hadn’t told James about Julie. They hadn’t seen each other again for a full fortnight after that morning Harry had appeared in the fireplace, and by that point it felt almost too late to tell him. Because by that point it must seem like he had been trying to hide it. And again, Teddy didn’t want to fight about it. Actually spending decent quality time with Jamie was so rare these days he couldn’t bring himself to ruin it.  
  
He knew that it was shitty of him to keep this from Jamie. But it wasn’t like he’d done it intentionally. And the longer it went on the harder it became to tell him, because now he wouldn’t only have to tell Jamie about her, he’d have to explain why he’d been keeping this information to himself for… fuck, how long had it been? Five weeks?  
  
He tried to justify it to himself by insisting that there was nothing there. Nothing between him and Julie. Which there wasn’t. They got on well enough, Teddy would say that they were friends. But there was no sexual tension between them.  
  
But if Teddy was really honest with himself, he did still find her attractive.  
  
Not that that meant he wanted to do anything about it, or wanted anything to happen. It was just that, objectively, he could appreciate that she was attractive. That wasn’t wrong, right?  
  
Maybe not, his conscience said. But lying about having slept with her is.  
  
“When did you last speak to Jamie?” Teddy asked, avoiding the question. This didn’t go unnoticed by Luke, who narrowed his eyes again. But he didn’t call Teddy out on it.  
  
“Couple of days ago” Luke said casually. “He came over for a beer. You were working late. Again” he said pointedly.  
  
Teddy sighed.  
  
“I need to do better, don’t I?” he said, defeatedly.  
  
“Look” Luke said, consolingly. “We all know you’re not being shit on purpose. It’s work, it’s not like you’re spending all your time seeing someone else… is it?” Luke was eyeing him very seriously now and Teddy was offended.  
  
“Fuck off, of course I’m not!” he said, outraged. “Do you really think I’d do that?”  
  
“No” Luke said quietly, his expression softening. “But I know there’s something you’re not telling us.”  
  
“Us?” Teddy asked, torn between amusement and indignation. “You’re in this relationship now too, are you?”  
  
“Oh please” Luke said, waving his hand dismissively again. “Me and you have been in a relationship since first year.” Teddy laughed at that. “An entirely platonic one of course” Luke added in a very dignified voice.  
  
“Yeah, you’re far too intelligent to get mixed up with someone as unreliable as me” Teddy said grinning.  
  
“And yet, here we are” Luke smiled. Teddy laughed again.  
  
“You’re plenty reliable Teddy” Luke added, seriously. “But you’ve never had to do THIS before. It’s hard, you know? Why do you think _I’m_ still single?”  
  
“Oh you don’t want me to answer that” Teddy grinned and Luke laughed.  
  
“Just… don’t fall at the first hurdle OK?” Luke said. “You and Jamie are good together. Really good. Don’t fuck it up if you can help it, alright?”  
  
“Alright” Teddy agreed.

-

After speaking to Luke, Teddy resolved to work much harder with Jamie. He sent him an owl asking for a copy of his work schedule, and saying that they were going to spend some time together next week and Teddy didn’t care what he had to do to make it happen. James had sent him the schedule and a note which simply said ‘Wednesday, your place’.  
  
Teddy looked over James’s work timetable and it was pretty crazy. Sunday working in the Goblin Liaison Office, Monday in Mexico, Tuesday in Scotland. He had Wednesday off but then Thursday was an underwater expedition in the Pacific ocean, off the coast of New Zealand. Friday was debriefing at the office and then he had to go to Gringotts in Diagon Alley for a meeting with the Goblins on Saturday. Jesus Christ, no wonder he was bloody tired.  
  
James had told him previously that this was to be expected. The younger curse breakers got sent just about everywhere, since they didn’t have kids or anything so it was less of a problem if they got stranded in Peru for a week. James said that once he had a bit of experience he would be able to pick and choose his assignments and he wouldn’t have to travel so much.  
  
Ministry workers whose jobs inherently involved a lot of travel worked closely with the portkey office, so it wasn’t like the travelling itself was particularly difficult. James could be on the other side of the Earth within five seconds. It was getting back that was the problem. The curse breaker teams that went out had organised portkeys for their return, but it was quite common to miss them because they got held up with something or other. There were safety protocols for this of course, back up portkeys and safe apparition points. But they could only apparate to a place of safety in the same country – not just for apparition safety reasons, but also for border security reasons. And there were some places where extraction was very difficult. In the middle of the Pacific ocean, for example.  
  
James’s job also involved erratic hours. This week’s schedule was fairly normal, with all the expeditions starting at 10am, UK time (with an hour of briefing beforehand). But this wasn’t always the case. Some curses could only be broken at a certain time of the day, or sometimes they just needed enough daylight to be able to see what they were doing.  
  
Teddy looked down at James’s handwriting in the note, noticing how he looped the tail of his Ys. Fucking hell, he thought, I miss him so much I’m pining over his fucking handwriting. This is ridiculous.


	16. Is this crazy? To think it might be something?

Teddy couldn’t wait until Wednesday. When he got to work he went straight to Harry’s office.  
  
The whole floor was pretty empty because it was a Saturday, but Teddy knew he would be there. Working weekends had become a regular thing for Teddy, Julie and Harry now that this case was heating up so much. There had been two more break-ins in the past week, which meant the perpetrator was either getting closer to their goal, or more desperate to achieve it. Neither of those things boded well. Fortunately no-one had been killed at either of the latest break-ins. However, the DNVC were now angling to take the case back, since the number of ‘clean’ scenes now outnumbered the number of bodies. The minister had told them to piss off (not using those exact words obviously), saying that it wasn’t in the best interests of the case to keep flip-flopping over who was running it. But that meant that the Auror Office were now under extra pressure to solve it quickly.  
  
The minister was also working tirelessly to make sure the press didn’t get hold of it, because this whole thing appearing all over the prophet was a sure fire way to scare the perpetrator into killing again, to try and speed up their mission or to cover their tracks.  
  
Harry wasn’t letting this pressure get to him – Teddy knew it wasn’t the first time he’d been in this sort of situation and he supposed as head of the department he must be used to it. Harry was working hard for sure, but he didn’t seem particularly more stressed than usual.  
  
Teddy couldn’t pretend the pressure wasn’t getting to him. He was frustrated with himself for not getting to the bottom of it yet. One of the latest break-ins had been at the home of a leading expert in the field of astronomy, and Teddy was sure that this was important somehow. But he just couldn’t see how all the pieces of the puzzle fitted together yet. It was like they were missing the crucial piece.  
  
He thought Luke was exaggerating about him looking like shit, but he had to admit he did look pretty run down. He had started wearing his hair a paler shade of blue, to make himself look less washed out, and he was using his metamorphoses to get rid of the big bags under his eyes.  
  
Harry’s office door was open (it was still bloody roasting down here) and Teddy loitered in the doorway, unsure whether it would be stupid to knock or not. Before he had made up his mind whether to do so or to just announce himself, Harry looked up from the file on his desk.  
  
“Oh – Teddy… what can I do for you?” he asked, looking surprised.  
  
“I was just wondering… do you know if James is home tonight?” Teddy asked.  
  
It seemed to take Harry a minute to register what he was talking about. He looked mildly confused.  
  
“Oh right… I think so” he said, looking very unsure. “I can’t really keep track of his work schedule at the minute…”  
  
“He’s not working” Teddy said. “But I don’t know if he’s playing quidditch or something.”  
  
“I doubt it” Harry replied. “He was pretty wiped out when he got back yesterday.”  
  
“Yeah, we were supposed to go for a beer” Teddy told him. “I thought I might go to yours tonight instead, since he’s not up to going out.”  
  
“Ah, OK” Harry said. “You’re welcome to come over, of course, any time.”  
  
“Thanks Harry” Teddy smiled.  
  
“How are you getting on with those notes, by the way?” Harry asked as Teddy made to leave his office.  
  
“Three more journals to go” Teddy sighed. “I’m hoping to close it out today while Julie’s with the astronomer.”  
  
He was still reviewing Xenophilius’s research. It was taking a long time because they weren’t particularly making it a priority anymore. And of course no-one actually wanted to do it. But today the job had fallen to Teddy, while Julie was out scouring the latest burglary scene for anything missing. Teddy had wanted to go with her, but she insisted his time was better spent on the journals, and Teddy knew she was right. The crime scene didn’t need two of them to do a second visit. Their first visit had confirmed it was the same MO as all the others, and Teddy didn’t expect anything to actually be missing. Because nothing had been from any of the others. Still, Teddy had a long and pointless morning of work ahead of him. Although he really wasn’t looking forward to the work itself, he was looking forward to finally fucking being done with this.

-

In his eagerness to get to the end of this stupid task, Teddy kept catching himself skim-reading Xenophilius’s notes and not really taking anything in. Which then meant he had to go back and read it again, so the whole process was actually taking LONGER than it should be. He also couldn’t help himself groaning in frustration every time he came across something that sounded vaguely plausible, because that meant that he had to then go and do some fact checking and cross referencing, only to discover of course that it was complete bullshit.  
  
He picked up the second-to-last journal, sighing resignedly and opened the first page. There was a crude drawing of what looked like someone holding the diadem under the moon, on top of a mountain. The paragraph of text on the opposite page was titled: ‘the secret to unlocking the mind’. Something about this caught Teddy’s attention, although he wasn’t sure what. He sat up straight and narrowed his eyes, reading carefully.  
  
It was a somewhat fantastical story, involving ancient civilisations and untold branches of magic. But the basic premise was that if one were to place the diadem under a specific planetary alignment, it would reveal the secret to unlocking the power of the mind.  
  
Teddy re-read the story several times. Something about it vaguely rang a bell. He flicked through the rest of the journal and found that pretty much all of it was dedicated to this one theory. There was all sorts of what Xenophilius considered to be evidence stuck in there. There were lots of anecdotes, some of which were hand written by Xenophilius himself having interviewed someone, but others were ripped out from printed books or newspapers. Most surprisingly, there was a large section of the journal devoted to start charts, including a few pages ripped out of a text book on planetary alignments. Teddy racked his brains trying to think why this was familiar. He felt like he had heard this story before. But where?  
  
Teddy stood up, torn between going to tell Harry what he had found, or apparating to Julie to see what she made of it. Teddy remembered Luna’s and Harry’s warnings about not getting drawn into a wild goose chase, and tried not to get ahead of himself. But it was difficult to remain sceptical when he remembered that Julie was currently interviewing an astronomer. This could be the missing piece that brought everything together. It seemed to fit perfectly. But then, Teddy argued with himself, is it just too easy? Too convenient. Was he so desperate for a solution that he was grabbing at the first thing that seemed to give him an answer?  
  
He tried to forget about the case entirely, and objectively work out whether the theory was actually plausible or not. It didn’t seem that crazy, not really. Planetary alignments were known to influence magic. And damn it something about it all was so familiar.  
  
He made up his mind to go and see Harry. Harry had known Xenophilius after all, he would probably know better than Teddy whether this was something to pursue or not.

-

Teddy ran the whole way down the corridor in his excitement and burst into Harry’s office, startling Harry, who was still sat calmly at his desk going through files.  
  
“Harry!” Teddy said slightly breathlessly. Fuck, I am out of shape right now, he thought as he leant on Harry’s desk, trying to catch his breath again.  
  
“I think I’ve got something” Teddy said after a couple of breaths, and briefly explained what he had just found. Harry gave Teddy his full attention, listening intently.  
  
“… And then there’s all this stuff about planetary alignments” Teddy said, flicking to the start chart section to show Harry. “I don’t know if any of it means anything, I mean, Xeno wasn’t great at vetting his sources, but… I mean, is this crazy? To think it might be something? You said he’s been right before, right?”  
  
Harry took the journal from his and flicked through it himself, squinting in concentration. He paused every few pages to read a little. Teddy watched him silently, not wanting to interrupt. Harry eventually seemed to stumble on something and his eyes widened. He flipped the journal around, holding it out to Teddy. It was another hand drawing of an eagle flying in front of a ringed planet. It looked very familiar.  
  
“See, I feel like I’ve SEEN that before” Teddy insisted.  
  
“You have Teddy” Harry replied, seriously. “It was at the first crime scene.”  
  
Teddy jaw fell open in shock as a fragment of conversation between himself and Julie came back to him.  
  
_‘How do you know they’re all Ravenclaws?’_  
  
_‘Please. Vic number one had a huge picture of an eagle in his living room.’_  
  
“Fuck me…” Teddy whispered. Letting this wash over him. It had been right in front of them all along.  
  
“FUCK” he shouted, as it had suddenly just hit him, why the damn story was so familiar as he had been reading it.  
  
Harry himself seemed to be immersed in the full magnitude of this breakthrough, and didn’t even give Teddy a stern look for swearing, he just looked inquisitively at him.  
  
“The historian – victim number four! When we were going through those papers that he published on the diadem – one of them was all about planetary alignments and how they could enhance its magic!”  
  
It hadn’t seemed relevant at the time, because they knew the diadem’s magic could no longer be used. But now, especially in light of the fact that the latest break in had involved an astronomer, Teddy felt like he had been stupid to miss it.  
  
“Come on” Harry said, standing up and taking Teddy’s arm, so they could apparate together.


	17. Look at you, knowing about krakens and shit

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter ties in to a Scorbus fic that I'm writing (which I haven't posted yet) in which 'Mark' is a pretty significant character. He isn't really relevant to THIS story though, so don't pay much attention to that.

Harry and Teddy flooed back at the Potters’ house at about eight o’clock in the evening. It had been a very long day, but they were very pleased with their progress.  
  
After their discussion in Harry’s office, they had gone immediately to the astronomer, bringing Julie up to speed and interviewing the astronomer for ANYTHING he knew about it. He had denied knowing anything specifically about the diadem, but confirmed he had been studying an upcoming planetary alignment which would take place in about a weeks time. According to his research this alignment would be optimum for anyone doing any sort of code-breaking work.  
  
They had confirmed this with a couple of other experts in the field, including the current Hogwarts astronomy professor, since they were at Hogwarts anyway. They had dropped by there to talk to Helena Ravenclaw again, to try and get her to either confirm or debunk Xenophilius’s theory. She rather unhelpfully did neither, acting as though she had never heard the story before and refusing to give an opinion on whether she thought it could be true or not. She had smirked the whole way through the interview though and Teddy knew there was something she wasn’t telling them. But there wasn’t really anything they could do about that. They couldn’t arrest her for obstruction – she was a ghost.  
  
They had then paid visits to several professional historians, most of whom had heard of the legend, but gave it varying degrees of credibility. Apparently it wasn’t a particularly popular subject of research due to the vagueness of the supposed reward. No-one was really sure what ‘unlocking the power of the mind’ might mean.  
  
There was still a lot of work to do. They had the ‘when’ and the ‘what’, but they still didn’t have the ‘where’. Teddy had wanted to keep working but Harry had insisted they go home for dinner, reminding Teddy that he had said he wanted to hang out with James tonight.  
  
Teddy was struggling to switch off from work mode, and head was still buzzing with all sorts of theories as Harry greeted Ginny. He only realised Ginny was talking to him when she tilted her head to the side, saying:  
  
“Hello? You there, Teddy?”  
  
“What? I… Oh, sorry Ginny” Teddy said, startled. “Just having trouble switching my brain off.”  
  
She smiled warmly at him.  
  
“Is Harry working you too hard?” she asked, shooting Harry a stern look.  
  
“The other way around actually!” Harry said indignantly. “I had to drag him away!”  
  
“I tell you, one of these days I’m going to go over there and have a word with the minister myself about all this overtime” Ginny said frowning. Teddy couldn’t tell if she was joking or not. “Our James is worn out too, he just got back from God knows where…”  
  
“Bermuda” Teddy told her.  
  
“Bermuda…” Ginny repeated, shaking her head in a disapproving way. “Are you here for dinner, Teddy?” she added. “I’m afraid Al is staying at his friend’s and Lily is with Ron and Hermione.”  
  
“Oh, no, that’s OK, you don’t have to cook on my account” he replied. “I’m here to see James. We were supposed to be going round to our friend’s last night but he didn’t show.”  
  
“Have you come to tell him he’s working too hard?” she asked him, still looking disapproving. She then shot Teddy a rather amused look. “Mind you, pot, kettle and all that.”  
  
“Yeah, I know” Teddy smiled. “I’m no role model. I agree though, he IS working too hard.”  
  
“I think he’s asleep upstairs, I don’t know if you want to go and throw some water on him or something” Ginny said mischievously.  
  
Teddy smiled.  
  
“That would be cruel” he said. “I might just jump on his bed instead.”  
  
He grinned widely as he went upstairs. Damn it had been WAY too long since they last saw each other.  
  
He quietly opened James’s door without knocking, expecting him to be in bed. But James was sat in the middle of the floor poring over a book. The page he had open had a large picture of what looked like a kraken on it. He looked up in surprise as he heard the door open, but smiled when he saw Teddy.  
  
“Hey, what are you doing here?” he asked, sounding pleased.  
  
James looked as worn out as Teddy felt. There were dark circles under his eyes and his eyes were slightly creased, as though the dim bedroom light was too bright for him.  
  
“I came to see you” Teddy said, sitting down next to him and giving him a gentle kiss. James dropped the book and responded, wrapping an arm around Teddy’s waist.  
  
“Hmmm” James sighed contentedly as their lips broke apart and James rested his head on Teddy’s chest. “It’s good to see you” he said softly.  
  
“You too” Teddy smiled. “What are you reading?” he added, picking up the book, which had fallen on the floor and was now open at a page showing some sort of shark that had small spikes over its body.  
  
“Sea monsters native to the South Pacific” James said casually. “We’ve got a sunken ship there on Thursday.”  
  
“Yeah, I saw that” Teddy said, remembering the schedule that James said sent over. “You’re going to raid the ship?”  
  
James shook his head.  
  
“No, it’s just a reconnaissance trip. See what we’re up against.”  
  
“Hopefully no krakens” Teddy said, mildly concerned. James laughed, sitting up.  
  
“They’re an endangered species so I’d be surprised if we DID see one. Besides, they’re deep water dwellers, we’re only going a few miles off the coast.”  
  
Teddy smiled at him.  
  
“Look at you” he said, impressed. “Knowing about krakens and shit. Who’d have guessed you’d turn out to be such a good treasure hunter?”  
  
“That’s not politically correct, Teddy” James said looking stern, but Teddy knew he wasn’t being serious. He did know that calling a curse breaker a ‘treasure hunter’ was akin to calling them a thief, though. James had pulled him up on this early on, so that Teddy didn’t accidentally insult any of his colleagues. Curse breakers didn’t actually keep the treasure they retrieved, it all went back to the department who funded these excursions – which was run jointly between the ministry and Gringotts. James could go to prison if he was found to be skimming the treasure that he found.  
  
“How’s your case going?” James asked. “Catch the bad guy yet?”  
  
“Hmmm, about that…” Teddy said, frowning. “I know I said I’d drop everything for you on Wednesday but…”  
  
James sighed and his expression turned stony. Teddy knew that cancelling their plans was going to make him angry. But what could he do?  
  
“I’m sorry Jamie” he said earnestly. “It’s just, we’re THIS close to the arrest, I really can’t be taking time off right now...”  
  
“It’s fine, I get it” James said flatly, taking the book from Teddy and standing up, putting it on his desk.  
  
“I’m sorry Jamie” Teddy said again. He really was, it wasn’t like he’d rather be working than spending time with him. But this was important.  
  
“If I’m going to ask for a day off right now I need to have a damn good reason, you know?” Teddy added, his tone still apologetic. “And I can’t exactly say WHY, can I?”  
  
“No, it’s fine. Whatever” James said, not looking at him. Teddy knew his feelings were hurt.  
  
“Jamie…” he said softly, standing up and hugging James from behind, burying his face into the back of James’s neck. James sighed and Teddy felt the tension in James’s back loosen a little. He held Teddy’s arms in his own.  
  
“I know it’s not your fault” James said quietly. “I just fucking miss you.”  
  
“I miss you too” Teddy said, kissing the back of his neck. “And I promise when this case is over I am one hundred percent yours. I’ll take a whole week off and be at your beck and call. I’ll even come to the Pacific ocean with you if you want.”  
  
James laughed a little.  
  
“What, and get eaten by a kraken?” he asked. Teddy laughed.  
  
James’s stomach rumbled a little and he looked at his watch, holding it up to his face so that Teddy caught a glimpse of it too. It was a digital watch, that had the time on it twice, for some reason.  
  
“Why two times?” he asked, taking James’s wrist and examining it.  
  
“The bottom one is always UK time, because that’s what the all our schedules work to. It would be too confusing to have them all in local time” James explained, pointing at the watch with his other hand. “And the top one is local time in whatever time zone I’m currently in.”  
  
“That’s pretty cool” Teddy said appreciatively.  
  
“Useful. It’s a bit easier to keep track of what I’m doing now” James said. “Apparently I’m still missing meals though. l’m going to make a sandwich. You want one?”

-

Teddy tried to help James with the sandwich making back down in the kitchen, handing him things and offering to slice the cheese, but James was insisting he could do it himself.  
  
“I know you can do it yourself, I’m just offering to help” Teddy laughed.  
  
“I said I’ll make you a sandwich, let me make the pissing sandwich” James said, pretending to be annoyed, but he was grinning.  
  
“You’re not too old for me to tell you to watch your language” Ginny interjected from where she was sat at the kitchen table with Harry. “That goes for you too” she added to Teddy, who grinned.  
  
“Now we’re in trouble, are you happy?” Teddy said to James mischievously. James responded by throwing a piece of bread at him.  
  
Teddy picked up the piece of bread, dropping it in the bin next to James.  
  
“You’re going to pay for that later” he whispered playfully to James as he did so.  
  
“Fucker” James muttered back, not loud enough for his parents to hear.  
  
“Hey James, did you know about this planetary alignment next weekend?” Harry asked him. “Optimum for code breaking, apparently.”  
  
“Of course” James said, turning around and looking surprised. “Our department’s been working up to it for months. We’ve got loads of major operations going on next Saturday. Nothing for me though, they’re all too dangerous for a trainee…” he looked mildly resentful about that, but Teddy was quite glad. Anything that was sufficiently difficult to break through that it needed a planetary alignment to help them along was far too dangerous for Jamie.  
  
“Looks like we were a bit slow on the uptake” Harry said wearily to Teddy.  
  
“Why do YOU care about it?” James asked looking interested. “You breaking into somewhere?”  
  
“Not exactly” Teddy replied. James didn’t ask any further questions as he turned back around to the sandwiches. He knew that they couldn’t really talk about their case outside the office.  
  
Teddy leaned casually on the side.  
  
“So is Al over at Scorpius’s then?” he asked Ginny, making conversation.  
  
“No, he’s at Mark’s. Have you met Mark?” she asked. This took Teddy by surprise. It sounded a little harsh to say, but he didn’t think the kid had any other friends besides Scorpius.  
  
“No” he said. “Another kid from school?”  
  
“No, I don’t think they met at school” Ginny said casually. “He’s one of your friends isn’t he James?”  
  
“Yeah, sort of” James shrugged. “We play quidditch sometimes…”  
  
“Al’s hanging out with a quidditch player?” Teddy asked James, incredulously, looking at him for further explanation. Now that really WAS a surprise. James gave him a significant look.  
  
Teddy glanced back at Harry and Ginny, who were now discussing between themselves the fact that Al and Scorpius had apparently fallen out over something. Teddy went to stand next to James again.  
  
“What is the deal with _that_?” he muttered.  
  
“Come on, you know” James muttered back, still looking at him in that knowing way.  
  
“I don’t” Teddy said confusedly, at a complete loss as to what Al and one of James’s quidditch buddies would have in common. Unless…  
  
“Fuck, you think they’re…?” he whispered to James. He and James had had cause before now to suspect Albus might be gay. But he was still very young, it was kind of too soon to tell. He possibly didn’t even know himself yet whether he was or not. Or so they had thought.  
  
“You got a better explanation?” James asked, still out of earshot of Harry and Ginny, looking amused.  
  
“Fucking hell…” Teddy whispered. Part of him wanted to laugh out loud. What were than chances of both of Harry’s son’s being gay? Harry’s face would be priceless when he found out. But then Teddy had a horrible lurch of something like fear when he realised that sooner or later he might have to tell Harry that he himself was too. Jesus, that was going to blow Harry’s mind. All three of them! Teddy wondered vaguely for a moment if it was possible Lily was a lesbian too, stifling a laugh as he did so.  
  
Something Harry said to Ginny then registered in Teddy’s brain, and he was so surprised he forgot all about everything else for a second.  
  
“You what? Scorpius is dating Rose? As in, Ron and Hermione’s Rose?” he asked, feeling like the rug had been completely pulled out from under him. How had he missed all this? Jesus, he really needed to leave the office more often.  
  
“Yeah, we’re as surprised as you” James said, grinning. Truthfully, he and Teddy had speculated that there might be something there between Al and Scorpius.  
  
“Wow” Teddy said, letting out a slow exhale. “Guess there’s something in the air…”  
  
James elbowed him, as Harry and Ginny didn’t know what he and Teddy had just been talking about, and that was a bit of a strange thing to say out of context. They didn’t seem to notice anything out of the ordinary though. Ginny now turned her attention to Teddy.  
  
“Speaking of which” she said, smiling mischievously again. “Are you still seeing your mystery person?”  
  
Teddy felt himself start to get flustered, as Harry looked inquisitively at him as well. He really didn’t want to do this again.  
  
“No” he lied, hoping that this would deter any further questions. “It didn’t work out…”  
  
“That’s a shame” Ginny said, smiling consolingly. “Was it anyone we knew?”  
  
“No” Teddy said a little too quickly. Ginny looked sceptically at him.  
  
“It wasn’t Victoire again was it?” she said, accusingly.  
  
“What do you mean, ‘again’?” he asked indignantly. He had snogged Victoire like once, when they were about seventeen. She had told him he was a good kisser but she liked her men more macho, which still offended Teddy to this day. He felt very much victimised by the whole thing. Ginny had gotten very excited about it at the time, because that’s what mothers did, Teddy supposed (Andromeda certainly went on at him enough about ‘finding a nice girl to settle down with’). But it had been entirely meaningless, to both of them.  
  
Ginny didn’t respond to this, merely sipping her tea in a dignified way.  
  
“I thought since you didn’t want to talk about it, it might be someone we know, that’s all” she said finally.  
  
“No, it wasn’t” Teddy said, a little more convincingly this time.  
  
“It wasn’t Julie, was it?” Harry asked.  
  
SHIT.  
  
Teddy felt his eyes widen slightly in panic. FUCK, he KNEW Harry had overheard them the other day. This was the absolute worst possible time for him to bring it up though. Teddy’s brain went into overdrive, trying to work out how to diffuse the situation.  
  
“No, of course not” he said to Harry, as calmly as he could, but he could now feel James’s eyes on him too.  
  
“Your partner, Julie?” James asked, confusedly.  
  
Teddy prayed that Harry wasn’t going to say anything else. He was practically screaming inside his head at Harry to just shut up and drop it.  
  
“The two of you were looking pretty cosy in your office the other day” Harry said pointedly, and Teddy thought he might scream out loud.  
  
“No, there’s nothing going on with me and Julie” he said, fully aware that he sounded overly defensive and guilty as hell. That was making him panic even more.  
  
“Well, I heard you talking about how you used to date” Harry said seriously. “I don’t know how recent it was, but… I CAN trust you to be professional about it, can’t I?”  
  
Teddy was spiralling. This was bad. This was really bad.  
  
“It was years ago that we dated” Teddy said very clearly. He was addressing Harry, but it was really James who he wanted to hear these things. “Before she even worked at the ministry. And we only went on two dates, it wasn’t serious. And there’s NOTHING going on now” he insisted.  
  
Harry seemed to believe him. He gave a curt nod.  
  
“OK” he said calmly.  
  
Teddy could tell that Harry was a little annoyed with him for not mentioning it earlier, but there was no point in arguing about it. Teddy hadn’t done anything wrong really. Not to Harry anyway. Ginny was looking like she wanted to ask more questions about this development, but she could read the room. She knew that Harry didn’t want to hear any more about it, so she said nothing.  
  
Teddy chanced a glance at James. He looked thunderous. Teddy hoped that they could go somewhere out of earshot of Harry and Ginny before he started yelling.  
  
“Shall we take the sandwiches upstairs?” he asked James tentatively.  
  
James cleared his throat and tried to mask some of the anger on his face. He grabbed the two plates behind him and filed out of the room silently, Teddy following him, wondering what on earth he was going to say to make this right.


	18. Something you FORGOT to mention to me, Teddy?

As soon as they got back to James’s bedroom, James apparated the pair of them to Teddy’s apartment, where no-one would walk in on them.  
  
“Something you FORGOT to mention to me, Teddy…?” James asked, his voice dangerously quiet.  
  
Teddy paused, unsure how to proceed. Everything he was thinking just sounded like lame excuses.  
  
“I should have told you” he said, looking James in the eye. “I know I should have, I don’t know why I didn’t. But you HAVE to believe me, there is _nothing_ going on there.”  
  
“I don’t know why I’m surprised…” James said coldly, apparently disregarding this. “All those late nights and weekends you were working. I should have known something was up. And you couldn’t tell me about the case, fine, but you just stopped talking about work altogether. No more funny anecdotes. Not two words about your new _partner_ ” he practically spat the word. “I guess I was an idiot not to see it.”  
  
“Jamie please, there’s nothing-“  
  
“Don’t fucking ‘Jamie’ me!” he yelled, tears started to spill down his cheeks. Teddy didn’t know what to do. What to say to make up for what he had done. He tried to hug James, but he pushed him away.  
  
“Just don’t fucking lie to me OK?” he snarled. “Are you sleeping with her?”  
  
“No!” Teddy cried desperately. “I swear, I’m not! Look, everything I said to your dad was true… we USED to date, that’s all. Over a year ago, WAY before anything with you and me! I swear, I didn’t even know she worked at the ministry until this case.”  
  
James was looking at him like he wasn’t sure whether to believe it or not. Tears were still leaking out of his eyes but he wasn’t sobbing. He just continued to look at Teddy with those big sad eyes. Teddy felt like HE was about to cry.  
  
“And we’re working together now, yes, but there’s NOTHING going on” he gently took one of James’s hands and held it between his own. He took it as a good sign that James didn’t pull it away. But Teddy knew he wasn’t even close to forgiven yet.  
  
“When you say _dated_ …?” James asked in a hollow voice.  
  
“Two dates. That was it, just two dates” Teddy said earnestly. “It was nothing.”  
  
“Did you sleep with her? Back then?”  
  
Teddy didn’t want to answer that. He knew it didn’t help his case. But he knew he couldn’t NOT answer it.  
  
“Yes” he said quietly.  
  
“You fucker!” James tore his hand away from Teddy and wiped his eyes impatiently. “And you still want me to believe there’s NOTHING going on? Fine, maybe you’re not shagging her now but don’t fucking tell me it’s NOTHING! The two of you, cosying up in your office, reminiscing about old times!”  
  
“Jamie” Teddy said with as much sincerity as he possibly could. “There is NOTHING going on between us. Yes, we talked for like two minutes about the fact that we went out once. She said she was over it. I said it just didn’t work out because… well, I didn’t say it to her face but because it was fucking boring. She is JUST a colleague. I do NOT have feelings for her, at all.”  
  
“Do you think she’s attractive?” James asked. It sounded like a childish question, but he asked it quite calmly. Teddy didn’t think any good could come from answering it though, for either of them. And Teddy knew the consequences of answering it honestly. But there would be even worse consequences if he were caught lying again. And anyway, James would see right through him if he did.  
  
“Yes” Teddy admitted quietly. “But that doesn’t mean I want anything to happen!” he added hastily.  
  
There was long pause, in which James wiped his face again. Teddy wanted to try and hug him but was afraid of being pushed away again. He was desperate to make this right. The alternative didn’t even bear thinking about.  
  
“Jamie, what can I do?” he asked. “What can I do to prove to you that I don’t want anyone other than you?”  
  
James shook his head and looked down at the floor.  
  
“I believe you… I think…” he said quietly. Teddy breathed an enormous sigh of relief. But the moment was short-lived. James looked back up at him and his expression was still pained.  
  
“But you _lied_ Teddy, for weeks…”  
  
“I’m sorry” Teddy pleaded. The words sounded pathetic but he didn’t know what else to say. He thought about trying to explain, but it was pointless. There was no justifying it, what he had done was wrong. All he could do was apologise.  
  
James looked like he was thinking about it. Like he didn’t know what to do. Teddy had nothing more to say so he just stood there silently, waiting for James to say something. Praying that he hadn’t lost him.  
  
“That’s not OK” James said, finally. “You can’t KEEP things like that from me…”  
  
“I know. I won’t, ever again” Teddy insisted.  
  
James sighed sadly.  
  
“I’m gonna need some time” he whispered, before turning on the spot and disapparating again.  
  
“JAMIE” Teddy yelled after him, but there was no point. He was gone, and he didn’t want Teddy to know where.  
  
That didn’t mean Teddy wasn’t going to go after him though. He apparated back to James’s room, but he wasn’t there. And Teddy knew he wouldn’t have gone anywhere else in the house, not in that state. Because he’d have to make something up to explain to his parents what had happened.  
  
Teddy racked his brains, trying to think where he might be. To Luke’s, maybe? It was worth a shot.

-

Teddy apparated directly into Luke’s living room. Luke jumped up off the sofa in surprise.  
  
“FUCK! One of these days Teddy I’m going to fucking curse you into oblivion for just walking into my flat like this!” he faltered when he got a good look at Teddy’s expression.  
  
“What happened?” he asked, seriously.  
  
Teddy didn’t know where to begin. He started by telling Luke about Julie and about how he had known he should tell James but the timing never seemed right so he just never did. Luke scowled but said nothing and let Teddy talk. So Teddy told him about James finding out through Harry and about how he had confronted Teddy, suspecting that Teddy was being unfaithful. By the time Teddy got to the point about James disappearing, he was sobbing.  
  
“And I just don’t know what to do” Teddy said desperately. “I don’t know what to say to him. FUCK, I don’t even know where he is!”  
  
Luke looked at him, his expression unreadable, while Teddy took a few deep breaths and tried to get his shit together. He wiped his eyes and looked pleadingly at Luke. Then, without warning, Luke slapped him, full force, across the face.  
  
The sound echoed through the apartment. Teddy fell sideways on the sofa, feeling like the side of his face where Luke had struck him was on fire. He cried out in pain, but did nothing to resist. He looked pathetically up at Luke to see if he was going to hit him again, but Luke had gotten up off the sofa and was looking for something in the kitchen. Teddy wondered wildly for a moment if he was finding something to beat Teddy with, but he returned with a bottle of firewhisky and two glasses, as Teddy was sitting up feeling intensely sorry for himself.  
  
“Thanks” he said weakly, accepting a glass from Luke.  
  
“For what?” Luke asked darkly, downing his own drink in one and then lighting a cigarette.  
  
“For sorting me out” Teddy said, looking sheepishly down at his glass.  
  
Luke shook his head.  
  
“I’m not sorting you out Teddy. Not this time. I didn’t hit you because I’m sorting your shit out, I hit you because you fucking deserved it” he was looking at Teddy furiously and Teddy knew he had REALLY fucked up this time. Luke smacking him was not inherently unusual, but Luke being actively angry at him was. Luke was righteous and a little holier-than-thou. He was sarcastic and condescending. And he would say awful things to Teddy, but he would say them with a sort of detached exasperation. He was never angry. Not like this.  
  
“You’re a fucking prick, you know that?” Luke added, with malice. He wasn’t joking. He really meant it. Teddy didn’t know what to say.  
  
“Yeah I know” he said quietly.  
  
“No, I don’t think you DO Teddy” Luke said angrily. “WHY are you here?” he demanded.  
  
Teddy was scared now.  
  
“Because I don’t know what to do…?” he said worriedly.  
  
“And you think I’m going to fucking tell you what to do, is that it?”  
  
Teddy looked at him, at a loss as to what to say. He knew he deserved Luke’s anger. He couldn’t defend himself. And he knew he didn’t deserve Luke’s help right now. But he HAD to ask for it. Because he HAD to make things right with Jamie. He HAD to stop Jamie from leaving him.  
  
“Luke, _please…_ ” he begged.  
  
Luke’s expression softened.  
  
“I’m not your fucking safety net, Teddy” Luke said. He was speaking less harshly than before, but his tone was still very firm. “I’m not here to just fix it every time you fuck things up with Jamie. I’m not sure I can, even if I wanted to. You shouldn’t be fucking things up with Jamie in the first place! He’s the best thing that ever happened to you!”  
  
Teddy started to cry again.  
  
“I know!” he said.  
  
Luke put an arm around his shoulders and said nothing more. The two of them sat there for a long time, the silence punctuated only by Teddy’s sobs.  
  
“I can’t get in the middle of this, you know that don’t you?” Luke said to him eventually, his tone now quite calm. “YOU need to be the one to fix this.”  
  
Teddy nodded, closing his eyes and letting the tears stream down his face.  
  
Yes, he did need to fix this. But he didn’t know how.


	19. Jesus Christ, what happened to you?

Teddy spent the rest of the weekend at Luke’s. He didn’t remember falling asleep on Saturday night. He supposed he and Luke had drank themselves into oblivion and Luke had just left him on the sofa when he passed out there.  
  
When he woke up on Sunday morning he had wanted to go out and try and track Jamie down – he had about half a dozen ideas of places he might possibly be. All them seemed somewhat unlikely (the Fly Traps’ training ground? Victoire’s place? Maybe he had actually gone into work – wasn’t he supposed to be at the goblin liaison office today?). But Teddy was willing to chase him to the other side of the Earth at this point. Luke had stopped him, telling him he would only make it worse and that he needed to let Jamie come to him.  
  
Little though he knew he deserved it, Teddy was hugely grateful for the advice, even if it wasn’t what he wanted to hear. Teddy knew he shouldn’t rely on Luke to fix his problems like this, and he made a promise to himself never to mess things up like this ever again. But he REALLY wanted Luke to help him fix it this time. He must know what to do. He always knew what to do.  
  
Luke had refused to say another word about it however, reiterating that he wasn’t going to get in the middle of it. This had freaked Teddy out more than anything else had at that point, because Luke refusing to help fix something was basically unprecedented. Teddy took this to mean that Luke believed it couldn’t be fixed.  
  
Teddy knew he was in no fit state to go to work on Monday morning, but he didn’t see what else he could do at this critical juncture in the case. His metamorphosing wasn’t working, so he couldn’t do anything about the dark circles under his eyes, or the fact that his hair was now ashen brown and flopping limply down in front of his eyes. He had to keep sweeping it back with his hand, which he was aware was making him look even more stressed out. He had caught himself earlier in the bathroom mirror doing it, and had to stop and stare at his reflection for a good ten minutes, so shocked by what he saw. He never before been so clearly able to see the ghost of the werewolf in himself. He looked just like his dad, at about age forty (which didn’t bode well, considering he was twenty-six). He looked like shit, quite frankly, and couldn’t blame Julie for practically jumping back in surprise when she saw him.  
  
“Teddy! Jesus Christ, what happened to you?” she exclaimed as he arrived at his office at about 7am, where she had already set up camp and was poring over maps and star charts.  
  
Teddy sighed. He had expected the question, and he knew he was going to have to make something up to tell Harry when he saw him, but he had already decided that there was no point in lying to Julie. She already knew that Teddy went both ways.  
  
“Fight with my boyfriend” he said quietly, dropping himself down into his desk chair.  
  
“I didn’t know you were seeing someone” she replied, a little taken aback.  
  
“Neither does Harry, so…” Teddy gave her a serious look, to indicate that this conversation was just between the two of them. She nodded to show she understood. Teddy felt a twinge of guilt and a slight stinging in the cheek where Luke had slapped him as he reflected that he was still keeping secrets from everyone, and it was liable to all blow up in his face one day. But this wasn’t the time or the place to let that particular secret out.  
  
Just then, the door opened and Teddy’s manager Steve poked his head in.  
  
“Teddy, thought that was you I saw come in just now” he said, frowning at Teddy with mild concern. “You don’t look too good, are you sick?”  
  
“Yes” Teddy said, jumping on the excuse. “Just a bit of a bug, I’ll be fine…”  
  
“Don’t be coming in getting everyone else sick” Steve said sternly, still looking concerned. “You go home if you need to, alright?”  
  
Teddy shook his head.  
  
“Really, I’m fine” he insisted. Steve didn’t look as though he believed him but he let the matter drop.  
  
“Alright, well. The curse breakers are all over this planetary alignment as I’m sure you can imagine” Steve said, addressing both him and Julie. “Harry’s in a meeting with the head of the department right now but he wants you two to go down and talk to Bill Weasley, one of their senior agents. Reckons he might know something about the diadem.”  
  
Teddy felt like someone had just stuck an icicle through his stomach. He had to go up to Jamie’s office? He felt a small amount of relief as he realised that James wouldn’t be there – he was in Mexico if he was in work at all. But he still didn’t much fancy talking to Jamie’s uncle right now. He was surely going to want to make small talk about the family.  
  
“Is he in yet?” Julie asked.  
  
The auror office was relatively busy right now, as people liked to get an early start around here. But it was still quite early in the morning. The rest of the ministry was likely to be pretty much deserted at this time.  
  
“Yes, they’re working round the clock at the minute” Steve replied. “He’s expecting you anytime now.”  
  
Julie advanced on Teddy looking worried as Steve left the office.  
  
“Teddy, are you OK?” she asked kindly. “You can go home if you want, I can handle this.”  
  
Teddy shook his head again.  
  
“No, I’m fine, really” he said, but couldn’t help himself from sighing resignedly as he got out of his chair. “Fucking had to be the curse breakers, didn’t it…” he muttered to himself.  
  
“Why, what’s wrong with the curse breakers?” Julie asked with interest, possibly thinking there was some sort of inter-departmental scandal she hadn’t heard about. Teddy laughed a little in spite of himself.  
  
“Nothing’s wrong with curse breakers in general” Teddy said, as they made their way down to the lifts. “There’s just one in particular I’m trying to avoid.”  
  
“Ahh, the mystery man” she replied, still looking interested. “Is that why you can’t tell Harry? Because of the work thing?”  
  
“Not exactly…” Teddy replied, as they entered an empty lift, wondering how much he should tell her. Julie didn’t really know the people involved - she had never met Jamie and she didn’t know Harry particularly well. She didn’t know about their weird and complicated family connection. So it wasn’t like it would matter, if she found out about Jamie. She had also proven that she could keep a secret, the two of them had worked together for six weeks without anyone finding out they had any sort of history.  
  
“First of all, Harry doesn’t know that I sometimes sleep with men, so…” Teddy said quietly, as the lift ascended.  
  
Julie nodded.  
  
“And secondly…” Teddy paused, wondering if he dared say it. The lift doors opened, but they weren’t at the right floor yet. An elderly witch was waiting to get into the lift, with an armful of ferrets.  
  
Julie put her hand out to stop the woman as she tried to enter.  
  
“Sorry, I’m allergic to ferrets” she said, calmly but assertively. “You’ll have to get the next one.”  
  
The witch looked a little taken aback, but she smiled and said ‘of course’, stepping backwards again.  
  
The lift doors closed again and Teddy smiled at Julie.  
  
“Secondly…?” she prompted him.  
  
“It’s Harry’s son… The guy that I’m seeing” Teddy told her.  
  
“Fucking hell!” Julie exclaimed, but there was no time for any further reaction, as the lift doors opened onto the finance department’s floor.  
  
Teddy could tell that Julie wanted to ask him a thousand questions about this, but she put her professional face on as they made their way down a series of very busy corridors towards the curse breakers office. 

-

Bill Weasley, it transpired, wanted to take them to look at something in a vault at Gringotts. He had pre-empted the trip with a warning that this may not be useful, and could turn out to be entirely unrelated to their case. But having described it to Harry, Harry apparently thought it was worth a look. But Harry being the busy man that he was, had delegated the task to Teddy and Julie.  
  
So now the three of them were taking a long ride in one of those rickety old carts to the deep underground vaults. Bill had conversed briefly with the goblin who was steering the cart about the expected influx of new treasure from all the missions that were taking place under the planetary alignment at the weekend. But now he turned his attention back to Teddy and Julie.  
  
Teddy quite liked Bill. He had met him a few times in the past and was always surprised by Bill’s laid back demeanour, given that he essentially raided curse-ridden tombs for a living. He had been just about the only one to not freak out that time that Teddy had kissed Victoire, which had been a bit of a strange role reversal, given that he was her father. He seemed to just take everything in his stride. Including the fact that he was savaged by a werewolf sometime during the war, and had huge claw mark scars all over his face. But aside from the scars you would never guess from talking to him that he had lived through such a horrific time period. Not just that, but been actively involved in the resistance. He laughed and joked very easily – Teddy thought to himself that perhaps that was an inescapable Weasley trait. Ginny was much the same.  
  
Bill’s hair was fully grey, but he still wore it long and pulled back into a ponytail. He dressed very much like Teddy – in fact, he wouldn’t have looked out of place at all on the Auror floor. Teddy knew that Bill had been a member of the Order of the Phoenix, so he probably could have been an Auror after that if he wanted. But apparently he preferred curse breaking.  
  
He was currently chatting excitedly to Julie and Teddy about how he was going to finally break into the deepest tombs inside the pyramids of Giza on Saturday. Apparently ancient Egyptian magic was his area of expertise, and he had spent a large portion of his career working up to this. It was a once in a lifetime event, he assured them.  
  
“That means we’ve only got one chance to catch our guy then” Teddy said fervently to Julie.  
  
“I’m sure you will” Bill said, waving a hand dismissively, as if to say it was nothing to worry about. “Even if you don’t track them down, odds are WE’LL run into them somewhere. We’ve got fifty-three operations going on all over the world when the planets are in optimum position on Saturday. I’ve never known the like of it. Even the trainees are being bumped up, we just don’t have the manpower otherwise…”  
  
“Wait, does that include James?” Teddy asked, frowning.  
  
“Yep” said Bill, casually. “He’s been put on the Roman catacombs I believe.”  
  
“Is it dangerous?” Teddy asked, worriedly. Bill laughed.  
  
“Nah, not really” he said, still very calm. “There’ll be some reanimated skeletons to deal with, maybe some disembowelment curses, the Romans were quite keen on those…”  
  
Teddy was about to argue that that sounded pretty dangerous to him, but the cart stopped with a sudden jerk outside a vault. The vault itself was very ordinary-looking. A steel wall with a large escape hatch on one side. The goblin went over to the hatch and turned the wheel three times clockwise, then once back the other way. The wheel then shone with bright green light, the goblin’s hands still on it glowing green too. The light disappeared after a few seconds and Teddy blinked rapidly, trying to get the flashing spots out of his eyes.  
  
By the time he had regained his vision, the hatch was open and the goblin gestured for them to enter.  
  
Bill did so first, followed by Julie and finally Teddy. Teddy thought his jaw was going to hit the floor as he walked in. It was absolutely huge – larger than the great hall at Hogwarts. Larger than a quidditch pitch, even. Teddy looked up and it felt like the inside of a cathedral. The high ceiling was formed in stone arches and there were flaming torches dotted around the walls providing just about enough light to look around. The vault was stacked with all sorts of things. Wooden treasure chests with ancient coins spilling out of them. Piles of precious gems, some of which still had bits of plain rock stuck to them where they had clearly been hacked out of the earth. Suits of armour and medieval weapons. Bill led them over to section of what appeared to be large stone panels with ornate carvings in them.  
  
As they got a bit closer, Teddy could see that the carvings appeared to be oriental – there were a lot of dragons, snakes and lions. In fact, Teddy was pretty sure they were of Thai origin. Bill looked impressed when he asked for confirmation.  
  
“Yeah, they came from the Thai highlands, how did you know?” he said.  
  
“I spent six months there before coming to work with Harry” Teddy replied. He had seen a lot of artwork like this.  
  
“Well, I guess you’re the right person to ask then” Bill said, waving his wand and making one of the panels at the back levitate towards them. “What do you reckon?” he asked, as the panel came close enough for them to see.  
  
Teddy understood why Harry wanted to look at it. It was a carving of a woman with long flowing hair holding a crown of some sort up to the moon. The hair struck Teddy as unusual, since these sorts of historical images usually showed women with their hair up. But other than that nothing really connected it to Rowena Ravenclaw. The crown the woman was holding didn’t even particularly look like the diadem, it was more like a geisha headdress.  
  
“I don’t know…” Teddy said, after looking at it for a while.  
  
“The hair is a bit out of place” Julie said, and Teddy nodded.  
  
“Yeah, I noticed that too…” he said distractedly, still staring at the picture. “Can I touch it?” he asked Bill.  
  
“Yeah, of course” Bill replied calmly. “Everything in here has been completely wiped clean.”  
  
Teddy ran his fingers over the woman’s hair, feeling the smooth lines of the carving. He didn’t know what he was expecting to learn from this, but he ran his hands all over the stonework anyway, noticing how smooth the woman’s hair was in relation to the rest of the panel. The stone seemed to have eroded slightly over time, leaving the surface slightly grainy and rough. All except the hair, which looked as though it had been carved more recently.  
  
He voiced this observation to Julie, who reached her hand out to feel for herself. As her fingertips brushed the woman’s hair, the crown suddenly lit up, and some ancient text appeared over the top of the woman in an arc. Julie gasped and withdrew her hand quickly. The writing instantly disappeared.  
  
“Are you OK?” Teddy asked quickly, taking her hand and examining it.  
  
“Yeah fine” she said breathlessly. “That just surprised me.”  
  
Teddy experimentally touched the stone again, and then had Bill do the same. Nothing happened for either of them, but when Julie touched it a second time the same thing happened. She kept her hand on it this time, assuring the boys that she didn’t feel anything out of the ordinary.  
  
Teddy recognised the characters as being Siamese, but he couldn’t read it. He quickly copied down the text as best he could in a small notebook that Julie pulled out of her bag.  
  
“Do you think it only appears if a woman touches it?” Teddy asked, as he closed the notebook and Julie took her hand off the stonework again.  
  
“Or maybe only if a Ravenclaw touches it” Julie said, smiling. Teddy looked at her in surprise, wondering how he had known her all this time and never asked her what house she had been in.  
  
“Either way good job we had you here” Bill said. “I think you ought to let our medi-team give you a once over though, make sure there’s nothing funny about it” he added, still very calm and breezy. Julie herself seemed quite unconcerned but agreed it was better safe than sorry.

-

Teddy had offered to wait for Julie while the medi-wizards examined her, but she told him to go and get a head start with the translation. So he was now waiting outside the office of one of the top translators in the communications office in a state of high anticipation.  
  
The language of the text itself was really quite common, it was the importance of the information that meant it had to go through such careful scrutiny. It had been through two translators already, and they were arguing about the order of the wording. Apparently oriental languages structured their sentences significantly differently from western languages, so a direct translation was difficult. But it absolutely HAD to be a direct translation for this case. A general ‘gist’ would not do.  
  
After what felt like hours, an old wizard finally emerged from the office and handed Teddy a slip of paper, giving him a short bow and then walked away without saying anything.  
  
“Um, thanks” Teddy called after him, and then looked down at the paper. He took as sharp intake of breath as he read it.  
  
_‘Wit beyond measure is man’s greatest treasure.’_


	20. You HAVE changed

Harry hid his shock even worse than Julie had, and actually leapt in fright when Teddy entered his office, still holding the slip of paper.  
  
“JESUS… Oh, Teddy, it’s you…” he said, letting out a slow exhale.  
  
“Do I really look that bad” Teddy asked, a little amused in spite of himself.  
  
“No, no…” Harry said, still looking as though someone had just dumped a bucket of ice water over him. “It’s just… bloody hell, you look just like your dad…”  
  
“Oh right...” Teddy looked at the floor, embarrassed.  
  
“I don’t mean that in a bad way” Harry backpedalled. “It’s just… for a spilt second I thought you _were_ …”  
  
Teddy smiled understandingly. He could see how that could be incredibly unnerving. Hell, he had freaked _himself_ out looking in the mirror this morning.  
  
“You having problems with your metamorphoses?” Harry asked, clearly calming down and now scrutinising Teddy.  
  
“Oh, um…” Teddy remembered that Harry had known his mother, so probably knew more about it than most people.  
  
“Yeah, I’m a bit under the weather” Teddy lied, deciding to stick with the same excuse. Harry was frowning at him, still inspecting him.  
  
“Are you alright, Teddy?” he asked seriously.  
  
“Yeah, it’s just a bug” Teddy said dismissively. “I’m fine, don’t worry.”  
  
“Did something happen this weekend?” Harry asked, now looking concerned. Teddy could tell that he knew something was up, but Teddy REALLY didn’t want to talk about it. Least of all with Harry.  
  
“No, nothing happened” he shrugged. “Just woke up today feeling a bit ill. There’s probably something going round...”  
  
“You can talk to me Teddy, you know” Harry said gently. “If there’s anything...”  
  
“Thanks Harry” Teddy said sincerely. “But really, I’m fine” he insisted. He wondered if he said it enough times would he start to believe it himself?  
  
“Are you and James fighting?” Harry asked. Teddy felt his stomach squirm uncomfortably.  
  
“What makes you think that?” Teddy asked, trying to be casual but not sure he was quite achieving it.  
  
“Well the two of you disappeared on Saturday night and James has been in a bad mood ever since” Harry told him, frowning. “I thought you’d just gone for a drink or something, but then…” Harry sighed.  
  
“Look, I’m not trying to pry in your life, I know you’re too old to need me to look after you any more, either of you” he added sadly.  
  
“That’s not true Harry” Teddy said kindly.  
  
Harry laughed a little.  
  
“Yes it is. And so it should be, I don’t want to still be picking up after all my kids when they’re your age. But that doesn’t mean I’m out of the loop entirely, OK?” he said, smiling. “Are you two, what, fighting over the same girl or something?” he asked, clearly clutching at straws.  
  
Teddy sighed. He apparently wasn’t going to get out of having this conversation.  
  
“Something like that” he said quietly.  
  
“I know how hard it can be, falling out with your best friend” Harry said consolingly. “But I’m sure you’ll sort it out. You’re practically family.”  
  
Teddy gave him a weak smile. That was exactly what made this so much harder. Luke was a decent enough shoulder to cry on, but the only person who could REALLY make Teddy feel better was Jamie. Even before they were together if Teddy was upset, Jamie was the one he called on.  
  
“Anyway” Harry said, clearing his throat. “I assume you came here to tell me something about the case?”

-

Over the next few days Harry, Teddy and Julie worked pretty much round the clock making sure that they were absolutely right about the location where the diadem would reveal its secret. They spoke to pretty much every credible astronomer they could get access to, as well as having several historians come and examine the stone carving, which was now in Harry’s office. Bill had worked out a spell to make the carving show it’s hidden text, so Julie didn’t have to keep going back there to touch it for them. Everyone they spoke to pretty much came to the same conclusion – this looked very much like the real thing.  
  
This caused some complications however. Several historians were now badgering them for further information about the diadem and the event to come this weekend, some even going as far as to ask if they could be there to witness it. Both Harry and the minister had personally told them this was not possible as it was far too dangerous, and that had been enough to get rid of most of them. But one guy in particular was now showing up at the ministry every day, demanding that he be allowed to accompany the Aurors on their mission. He said that they were not understanding the historical significance of what was going to happen there, and it would be a ‘criminal offence’ to let it pass undocumented. A sleep deprived and irate Julie had snapped at him that they were going there to apprehend a dangerous killer, not to ‘piss about with some bloody tiara’. The historian had then angrily threatened to go to the prophet with the story. At this point Harry had had security remove him from the premises, reminding him sternly about the non-disclosure agreement he had signed.  
  
They were also locked in a fierce battle with the curse breaker office, who of course had a whole host of missions themselves that involved some sort of springing point from the location in question (Doi Nang Non – the ‘sleeping lady’ mountain). Harry wanted them to clear the whole area, as they couldn’t be sure where exactly on the mountain their perpetrator was going to show up. The head of the curse breaker office flat out refused, saying that this would jeopardise countless of their excursions, and would make years worth of work leading up to this point entirely worthless. Teddy didn’t envy the minister, who was trying to broker peace between them and find a compromise. Neither the aurors nor the curse breakers were particularly happy with the current suggestion, which was that at least one auror accompany each of the curse breaker excursion teams.  
  
And then of course, there was the general public. The curse breakers had already spent months trying to clear civilians out of the area. There were astronomers who just wanted to observe the alignment, researchers who took a professional interest in it and wanted to try and measure its powers, spells and potions developers who wanted to use it to improve their products. And of course ordinary witches and wizards who wanted to take advantage of it for some sort of personal gain. The curse breakers had set up all sorts of impenetrable protections on the site about two weeks ago, including a guarded perimeter. But some people were still slipping through. It was likely going to be absolute chaos on Saturday.  
  
Teddy heard someone enter his office and jumped, sitting up straight, trying to look as though he hadn’t just woken up. He had been slouched forward in his chair with his head face down on the desk, not asleep exactly, but not really awake either. Just letting his brain drift. He hadn’t been home in two days, and had just been grabbing a couple of hours sleep here and there, wherever he could. He rubbed his eyes, feeling a little woozy, as purple spots started to appear from where he had sat up too quickly.  
  
“Jesus Teddy” Julie said, in exasperation, dropping a stack of paperwork on his desk. “Will you fucking go home and get some sleep already, you look like shit.”  
  
Julie had actually been going home every night, but only for about six hours or so. She was just as exhausted as Teddy was and it was making her quite short tempered. Teddy didn’t mind so much, she was never exactly one to mince her words anyway. But he wished she’s stop harping on at him about pushing himself too much. He got enough of that from Harry and Steve.  
  
“Yeah I know” Teddy said flatly, unable to even summon the energy to be annoyed at the insult. “Everyone keeps telling me…”  
  
“But you don’t listen, do you?” she said, speaking to him like a naughty child. Teddy ignored her and took a couple of forms from the stack of paperwork she had just brought in. It was authorisation forms for portkeys and accommodation in Thailand.  
  
“Harry wants us out there tomorrow” Julie told him, now pulling two cans of coke out of her bag and handing one to Teddy. “Get the lay of the land and interview some locals. There’s a good chance our guy’s already there, so we might even be able to catch him before Saturday.”  
  
“Damn, that would solve EVERYONE’S problems wouldn’t it?” Teddy said smiling as he opened his can and took a swig, grimacing at the sugary sweetness of it. He had been living off sugary drinks and vending machine snacks for the past 48 hours and it was starting to make him feel sick.  
  
“Yeah it would” Julie agreed, pulling up a chair to sit on the other side of the desk facing him. “But he’s been pretty damn careful so far. I don’t think we’ll see him until we’re on top of the mountain.”  
  
Teddy agreed. He thought it highly unlikely they would track him down before then. They still didn’t really know anything about the person they were looking for. They didn’t even know for sure that it was a ‘him’. No, this was going to be one of those dramatic show-down, fight-for-your-life sort of arrests.  
  
“You gonna be alright, for this?” Teddy asked her, frowning. It had suddenly occurred to him that Julie was a non-violent crimes officer after all. He didn’t know if she’d ever been in the middle of a duel before. Much less with a known killer. “For the arrest I mean” he added, in response to her confused look. “It might get a bit... dangerous…”  
  
Julie laughed and gave him a rather condescending look.  
  
“Typical Aurors, you think no-one else in the bloody world knows how to handle themselves…”  
  
“It’s a fair question” Teddy protested.  
  
“Why, because I’m a WOMAN?” she asked angrily.  
  
“No, idiot, because you’re a DNVC agent” Teddy, stung by the accusation. “My MUM was an auror, I’m not a bloody sexist…”  
  
“Sorry” Julie said quietly. She looked like she meant it. “It’s just that I’ve already had this conversation with Harry. He didn’t want to let me go. After all the hours I’ve put into this case…” she shook her head, looking angry. “It’s not like I DON’T have defence training you know. I might be in non-violent crimes but that doesn’t mean my job is all sunshine and rainbows...”  
  
Teddy smiled consolingly at her. Truthfully, in the past he had always dismissed Julie’s department as being exactly that. But Julie had proved herself capable over the duration of this case. And she certainly wasn’t as squeamish about things like dead bodies as Teddy had thought she might be.  
  
“Look, Harry just doesn’t want to put anyone in danger if he can help it” Teddy told her. “And believe me, he’s not sexist either. He’s been under the supervision of the two most capable witches I’ve ever met for most of his life.”  
  
“The minister?” Julie asked. Teddy nodded. “And…?”  
  
“His wife.”  
  
Julie laughed.  
  
“And his daughter too, come to think of it” Teddy added.  
  
“What’s his son like” Julie asked gently.  
  
Teddy paused. This was the first word she had said about it since the lift the other day. He glanced over at the office door to make sure it was definitely closed.  
  
“Don’t think I don’t know that’s the real reason you won’t go home by the way” she said to him in her no-nonsense tone. “You don’t have to talk about what happened. Just… tell me what he’s like. I’m curious.”  
  
Teddy leaned back in his chair, taking another swig of his drink.  
  
“Harry has two sons actually” Teddy told her. “The youngest, Al, looks just like him. Same hair, same eyes. The only difference is the scar and glasses.”  
  
“He’s got his Halloween costumes sorted for life then” Julie grinned. Teddy laughed.  
  
“He wouldn’t be caught dead dressed like Harry” Teddy said, still laughing at the mental image. “He kind of hates it you know, because it’s like, everyone just sees him as a mini-Harry…”  
  
Julie nodded understandingly.  
  
“And the eldest?” she prompted.  
  
“Jamie” Teddy said, smiling as he thought about him. “He looks more like his mum. All this curly red hair, and freckles. He has these huge, muscly arms” Teddy did a bicep flexing sort of action, to convey his point. “He used to play chaser for Puddlemere.”  
  
“Oh my God!” Julie exclaimed. “Of course, I’m so stupid for not putting that together! James Potter! He played for them a couple of seasons ago, didn’t he?”  
  
“Oh” Teddy said, surprised that she remembered this. “Yeah… you a Puddlemere fan?”  
  
“I’m not really into sports, but I remember THAT. It was all over the news, wasn’t it?”  
  
Teddy nodded, smiling. He remembered the distinct upswing in Jamie’s swagger at the time. He thought he was the coolest kid on the block. Teddy and Luke had taken the piss out of him mercilessly for it.  
  
“Hmm, you’ve done well there” Julie said appreciatively. “He was hot! I didn’t know he was gay.”  
  
“Again, neither does Harry, so…” Teddy gave her that serious look again. She made a gesture as if she was zipping her mouth shut.  
  
“So what’s he _like_?” Julie asked again.  
  
Teddy paused again. Where could he even start to describe Jamie? He was so wonderful, in so many ways.  
  
“He’s funny” Teddy said, deciding this was his favourite thing about him. “SO funny. Just, the best, to hang out with. He’s kind of a cocky bastard, but… it sort of suits him, you know? He’s surprisingly driven, for someone who never takes anything seriously. He can do anything he puts his mind to. He’s always there for you when you need it. He can make just about anyone smile, no matter what the circumstances.”  
  
Julie was smiling at him in an adoring sort of way. Teddy felt embarrassed.  
  
“What?” he asked, defensively.  
  
“You HAVE changed, Teddy” she said, still looking at him like she found him cute or something. “I thought, when you said you were seeing someone, you must have grown up a bit. But this… You really love him, don’t you?”  
  
Teddy looked down at the floor. He didn’t want to answer that. Not right now, when things were so bad.  
  
“Hey” she said softly, touching his forearm. “It’ll be OK.”  
  
Teddy knew she was just being nice, and had absolutely nothing to base this statement on. But it was nice to hear it all the same. He gave her a thankful smile.  
  
He cleared his throat and pulled the stack of paperwork towards him.  
  
“So when are we going to Thailand?” he asked her, his tone business-like.  
  
“Oh-nine-hundred tomorrow morning, UK time” she told him, rifling through the stack of papers looking for their travel itinerary.  
  
“What time is it now?” Teddy asked. He had taken the clock down off the wall because it was depressing him. If he was still here poring over maps at three o’clock in the morning, he didn’t want to know about it. “Fuck, what DAY is it now?” he added.  
  
“Wednesday, 11.30am” she told him, looking exasperated again. “And I’m not travelling with YOU in this state. We’re filling in these forms and then you’re going HOME.”


	21. Does it not count for anything that I’m HERE?

Julie had physically pushed Teddy out of the office and threatened to curse him if he didn’t go home after he had signed all the forms. He didn’t fight her too much on it, he knew he couldn’t carry on for much longer like this. Teddy usually apparated home, but today he trudged upstairs to the atrium to use the floo. Security around the auror office prevented anyone from apparating in, so he had to floo in in the mornings anyway. But as a means of easy escape in the event of an emergency, there were no restrictions on anyone apparating OUT of there. But in his currently state of exhaustion he knew he was definitely at risk of splinching, and it was a pointless risk to take.  
  
He must have been even more worn out than he thought, because he had barely climbed out of the fireplace in his apartment when he suddenly felt so overcome with exhaustion that he threw himself onto the sofa, face down, and fell almost immediately asleep.  
  
-

The apartment was dark when he woke up.  
  
Teddy lit his wand and squinted at the wall clock through bleary eyes. It was around midnight. He had been asleep for twelve hours! Fuck.  
  
He got up to turn the light on and then stood behind the sofa, stretching his legs a bit. He felt a million times better having finally got some rest. He looked down at his hands and tried to turn his fingernails blue. It didn’t really work. They sort of went a little bit blue, but it didn’t look as though he had painted them, it just looked like he was really cold. He sighed and gave up, shuffling moodily towards the bathroom.

-

When Teddy emerged from the shower he surveyed himself in the mirror. He supposed he looked slightly better. He wasn’t as pale as he had been, and the bags under his eyes had reduced. But his dull hair just made him look so bloody solemn, in comparison to his usual bright shades. He tried his hardest to get it to change, and he managed to brighten it up a little, to warmer shade of brown. But it was still resolutely brown. He swept it back off his face, annoyed.  
  
After throwing on some clean clothes he sat back down on the sofa and lit a cigarette, deep in thought. His sleep cycle was completely fucked, but he supposed that didn’t really matter because he’d be in a completely different time zone in a few hours. He knew he should probably eat something, but he didn’t feel hungry. He thought vaguely about making a sandwich, and then thought about James making the two of them sandwiches, while they teased each other. He smiled as he remembered Jamie throwing a piece of bread at him and it hitting him in the face.  
  
He sighed deeply. Letting out a long stream of smoke. He didn’t want to go to fucking Thailand right now. Not without sorting things out with Jamie first. He held the cigarette in his mouth as he rummaged through the assorted crap on the coffee table (takeaway menus, newspapers, letters), coughing a little as the smoke went up his nose. He eventually found James’s work schedule and saw that Thursday was the underwater expedition. He removed the cigarette from his mouth, sighing again.  
  
It would be a dick move to go and disturb him in the middle of the night when he was going to a shipwreck the next morning. But then – maybe he wasn’t anymore. Bill had said that the whole department was in chaos at the moment, with everyone being moved around everywhere. And hadn’t Jamie said the underwater one was only a reconnaissance mission? It seemed likely that that wouldn’t be going ahead now. Not with so many other important things happening.  
  
Teddy continued to smoke the rest of his cigarette while he thought about it. He also remembered what Luke had said, about letting Jamie come to him. But he just didn’t know if he could wait any longer. This was torture. And he was about to go on a pretty bloody dangerous mission, on foreign soil. He needed to have a clear head for that.  
  
He made up his mind. He stubbed out his cigarette in the ashtray and stood up, taking a quick second to ask himself if this was really a good idea.  
  
Probably not, he answered himself, but he was going to do it anyway. Fuck it.

-

He apparated directly into James’s bedroom, with a loud crack. He hoped he hadn’t woken up the entire house – did Jamie still have silencing charms on his bedroom? Teddy supposed he must do, as James yelled out in shock and no-one else came running in.  
  
James sat up in his bed, pointing his wand (which he had instinctively grabbed from his bedside table) at Teddy. He lowered it when he saw who it was, but continued to point it in Teddy’s general direction as he turned a lamp on. He was sleeping without a shirt on, and Teddy tried very hard not to ogle him, and to look him in the face as he approached the bed.  
  
“Sorry” Teddy said seriously. “I know this isn’t really a good time. I just…” he wished he had thought of what he was going to say before he came over. He now realised he had no idea what it was he wanted to say to James. He just knew that he needed to talk to him. To see him. To be with him.  
  
“Fucking right it’s not a good time” James replied, finally putting his wand down, but looking angry. “Jesus Teddy, I’ve got work in the morning.”  
  
“Your underwater thing still going ahead?” Teddy asked, surprised by this.  
  
“No” James scowled. “But I’ve got a million and one other things to do now in prep for this weekend. WHY are you here?”  
  
Teddy didn’t know how to answer that. He had thought he would know what to say when they were face to face but he was drawing a blank.  
  
“I’m going to Thailand tomorrow” he said eventually. Then shook his head. “No – today, I mean. I’ll be gone for a couple of days.”  
  
“And you needed to deliver that message to me at one o’clock in the morning, did you?” James was clearly still angry. Teddy knew instantly that it had been a mistake to come here like this. But he was here now, they might as well try and talk about it. He sat tentatively down at the foot of James’s bed. James moved his legs out of the way, but the way he was looking at Teddy didn’t invite confidence.  
  
“I don’t want to go with you still angry at me” Teddy said. As soon as the words were out of his mouth he realised that sounded selfish. He didn’t mean it like that. Well, maybe he did a little. But not entirely like that. He didn’t want to go when things weren’t right between them, is what he really meant.  
  
“You don’t get to decide that” James snapped. “I AM angry. And I’m not going to NOT be angry just because you say so.”  
  
“No, I know…” Teddy said desperately. This wasn’t going well. “I didn’t mean…” FUCK why was he so inarticulate?  
  
“I’m not going to forgive what you did just because you’re going to fucking Thailand” James added. “ _I’m_ going Rome, so what?”  
  
“Yeah, Bill mentioned that” Teddy told him, frowning, distracted by this. “Is it safe for you to be going on one of these high stakes missions? You’ve only been there a few months?”  
  
“Seriously?” James asked in outraged disbelief. “ _Seriously_ , you want to do this right now? You’re going to come over here and tell me I’m not good enough and it’s too dangerous? What the fuck do you know about it anyway?!” He was yelling now. Teddy didn’t know what to do.  
  
“WHY ARE YOU HERE, TEDDY?” James roared at him.  
  
“Because, I need to fucking fix this!” Teddy cried, taking hold of James by his upper arms. “I NEED you to fucking tell me we’re OK!”  
  
James pushed him off and got up out of bed, walking a few paces away.  
  
“We’re not OK Teddy” he said coldly, facing away from him. He wasn’t shouting anymore, but this was almost worse. He sounded so serious.  
  
“Jamie…” Teddy said softly. He didn’t dare move from where he was, still perched on the end of the bed.  
  
“I can’t…” James said, still not looking at Teddy. He covered his face with hands, rubbing his eyes stressfully. “I can’t DO this right now, I can’t deal with YOU right now!”  
  
“Well I can’t NOT do this right now!” Teddy cried in frustration, standing up and walking over to him. He knew better than to try and hug Jamie, even though that was what he really wanted to do. He walked around the other side of him so that they were face to face.  
  
“It’s driving me crazy, Jamie” he said pleadingly. “And I don’t know what to do. I don’t know how I’m going to fix this, but I HAVE to.”  
  
“You CAN’T just show up to my house in the middle of the night Teddy, you CAN’T DO THAT!” James was wringing his hands now, clearly unravelling. “Not when I’m still fucking pissed off at you! I told you I need time, you need to fucking DEAL with that! If you can’t handle it then maybe you shouldn’t have fucking LIED to me in the first place!”  
  
“Jamie, what do you WANT me to do?!” Teddy shouted. He was unravelling too. “I SAID I’m sorry! I said I’ll never fucking lie to you again! I don’t know what else to fucking do! Do you want me to tell Harry I can’t work with Julie anymore? Do you want to meet her? See for yourself there’s nothing going on?”  
  
“This isn’t about fucking _Julie_!” James spat back, saying her name with venom. Teddy didn’t entirely believe that, but he didn't pass comment on it. “This is about YOU, fucking lying to me, like I’m a fucking child! Like I’m not fucking mature enough to trust you!”  
  
“You DON’T trust me! The first thing you asked me when you found out was if I was shagging her!” Teddy replied defensively. He knew he wasn’t helping himself, but he couldn’t help it. He had no idea what they were even taking about anymore. This had escalated into one of those horrible explosive rows and Teddy wished he had never even come here. But he didn’t know how to stop it now that it was going.  
  
“OH MY GOD” James screamed in frustration. “Do you ever fucking LISTEN to anyone else, Teddy? Like, EVER? THE REASON I DIDN’T TRUST YOU WAS BECAUSE YOU LIED TO ME!”  
  
“I LIED TO YOU BECAUSE I DIDN’T WANT TO FUCKING DO THIS!” Teddy gestured wildly between the two of them. He was screaming now too.  
  
“THAT WORKED OUT REALLY FUCKING GREAT FOR YOU, DIDN’T IT?"  
  
“AARGH!” Teddy yelled in frustration. He was getting so angry and worked up trying to find a way to get through to James.  
  
“Does it not count for anything that I’m HERE?!” he shouted at James. “That I’m fucking TRYING?!”  
  
“No, it doesn’t fucking count for anything, because I don’t WANT you here!” James yelled back.  
  
A ringing silence followed. Teddy let that sink in. Was James really saying what Teddy thought he was?  
  
“So that’s it is it?” he asked, quietly. James sighed in frustration, still angry.  
  
“Yes, that’s it!” he cried. “Did you really think you could just fucking show up like this and everything would be forgiven? GO HOME Teddy! I can’t DEAL with you right now!”  
  
Teddy took one last look into his eyes and knew that he was serious, so he turned on the spot and disapparated.


	22. Two Minutes. And you, wand at the ready

Teddy made a quick stop at Luke’s before heading to the office, catching him as he was getting ready to go to work. Luke was not particularly sharp first thing in the morning, so rather than giving Teddy the usual earful about flooing in without warning, he just looked confusedly at him from where he stood in the kitchen, sipping coffee.  
  
“To what do I owe the pleasure?” he asked, eventually, looking Teddy up and down appraisingly.  
  
Teddy knew he looked like shit again. He had gotten back in the shower when he got back to his apartment, feeling like he needed to wash that conversation off himself. He also felt like he needed to have a decent cry, and it somehow seemed less pathetic to do it when there was already water running over him. The tears didn’t come, however. He just stood dejectedly in the shower, thinking of all the things he should have said. All the things he should have done differently. But there was definitely no way of fixing it now. Jamie might never speak to him again, after that.  
  
It was the middle of the night so it wasn’t like he could go anywhere. Normally in that situation Teddy would just drink until he passed out, but he had to keep a clear head for work. So he had just sat, smoking cigarette after cigarette, for hours. He put the TV on, but he wasn’t watching it. He was replaying the argument in his head and trying to work out what had actually happened. Exactly where it went wrong. And if it was really, definitely over. If there was even the smallest possibility of coming back from this.  
  
He now felt exhausted again. He helped himself to a cup of coffee in Luke’s kitchen.  
  
“I’m going to Thailand in about two hours” he told Luke calmly. “Going to arrest a dangerous criminal. Thought I’d better fill you in on what’s happened, in case I don’t come back.”  
  
He was joking of course, but Teddy reflected darkly that he had never been more distracted at work than he was bound to be right now. And this was a very dangerous arrest. It was possible that something might happen.  
  
“Something’s happened?” Luke asked, raising his eyebrows. He was looking at Teddy’s hair, and Teddy knew he could tell that whatever had happened wasn’t good.  
  
“So I went to see Jamie” Teddy sighed, leaning on the side. Luke slid into a seat at the table looking exasperated.  
  
“Like I told you not to?”  
  
“Yes.”  
  
There was a pause, in which Teddy tried to work out how to explain what had happened. He still didn’t really understand himself what had happened. How it had escalated into them screaming at each other like that.  
  
“And…?” Luke asked.  
  
Teddy ran his hand through his hair in frustration.  
  
“He wasn’t happy about it…”  
  
“I bet” Luke said, still serenely drinking his coffee.  
  
“He yelled at me. Like, a lot. And I was trying to, I don’t know… tell him I’m sorry, ask him what he wanted me to do… tell him I wanted to fix it…”  
  
“But he’s still too angry to listen to reason” Luke said. It wasn’t a question.  
  
“Yeah…” Teddy agreed. “And then I ended up yelling too…”  
  
“Of course you did” Luke seemed entirely unsurprised by this. “Because you couldn’t get him to listen.”  
  
“Exactly…” Teddy sighed. “And then he told me to get out and that he didn’t want me there…” Teddy looked down at the floor as another wave of hurt washed over him.  
  
Luke said nothing. Ordinarily he would make some condescending remark about having told Teddy not to go there in the first place. The fact that he wasn’t must really mean that Teddy was pathetic right now.  
  
“I think I’ve blown it, Luke…” he said quietly.  
  
“Did he say that?” Luke asked, seriously. “Did he say it was over?”  
  
“Not those words…” Teddy said, shaking his head. “But the way he screamed at me, Luke… To go home. Saying he couldn’t deal with me.”  
  
Teddy looked back up at Luke, who was frowning, looking serious.  
  
“That doesn’t mean it’s over Teddy” Luke said gently. “He might just need more time.”  
  
“But YOU think it’s over, right?” Teddy challenged him. “That’s why you won’t get involved?”  
  
Luke seemed surprised by this.  
  
“Fuck, is that what you think?” he asked, his tone a little lighter. “Teddy, I’m not getting involved because this shit is _serious_. Some things are just too personal.”  
  
Teddy was confused.  
  
“You’ve never had a problem being embedded in my personal life before” he frowned.  
  
“Look” Luke said, gesturing between himself and Teddy. “I know you and me have a slightly unhealthy, guardian angel sort of relationship going on.” Teddy sniggered in spite of himself. “And perhaps the personal boundaries are a bit blurred sometimes. But I have to draw the line _somewhere_ Teddy. I will NOT be responsible for the downfall of the first real relationship YOU have ever had.”  
  
Teddy was rather taken aback by this. He honestly hadn’t thought that there was a limit on what Luke was willing to involve himself in. But now he came to think of it, Luke had always been carefully detached from any issues regarding the significant others of anyone in their friend group. Teddy supposed he had never really noticed it before, because Teddy had never really HAD a significant other.  
  
“Shit…” he said aloud, as all this dawned on him.  
  
“So you DON’T think it’s hopeless then?” he asked Luke, desperately.  
  
“I honestly don’t know Teddy” Luke said apologetically. “I wasn’t there, I don’t know what happened.”  
  
Teddy nodded. It wasn’t what he wanted to hear, but it was something. It was hope.

-

Teddy was quite good at compartmentalising. This wasn’t the first time he had had to go into work while his personal life was in tatters. But he didn’t think he’d ever felt heartbreak like this before. The not knowing was unbearable. He almost wondered if just knowing that it was over forever would be better than hanging in the balance like this. Clinging to some desperate hope that might turn out to be a lie. But he resigned himself to the fact that there was nothing he could do about it now. If he went to confront Jamie again then it would DEFINITELY be over. All he could was wait.  
  
So he just tried to not think about it at all as he and Julie took their portkey and checked into their hotel in Thailand, in a small village at the foot of the mountain range. Harry would be joining them on Friday, so they had two days by themselves to do some general investigative work.  
  
It was quite boring stuff really. Interviewing locals to see if anyone had noticed anything suspicious (no-one had). Checking in with the curse breaker team who were already stationed there. Taking an excursion up the mountain to check out the terrain for themselves. The only thing that particularly differentiated it from the fieldwork they had been doing up to this point was the fact that they were walking around in beach clothes all day due to the hot climate. They spent their evenings strolling around the village, appreciating the beautiful scenery and eating the delicious local food.  
  
Teddy had forgotten how much he liked it out here. It was so different to the miserable grey British weather and the concrete jungle of the inner city. He liked England well enough – it felt like home in a way that no-where else ever did, no matter how much time he spent there. But he had enjoyed his time in Thailand possibly more so than anywhere else he had travelled. He thought vaguely about meeting up with some of his old friends on the other side of the country down by the coast, after this case was over. He was long overdue a holiday. And besides, he was having a hard time reconciling himself with the idea of going back to his normal life back home while this thing with Jamie was still unresolved. 

-

On Saturday afternoon, Harry, Teddy and Julie took their positions at the top of the mountain and set up their defences. The planets wouldn’t be in optimum position for several hours yet, but hopefully they could catch the perpetrator before the alignment actually happened, rather than during it. That would enable them to get out of the curse breakers’ hair, and it would simplify their operation purely from a logistics point of view, since none of them actually knew what was going to happen with the diadem.  
  
The whole mountain already had anti-apparition enchantments all over it, so they knew their guy was coming on foot. After all their work this week cross referencing various sources they were quite sure that the person needed to be on the very top of the mountain, on this particular crest. But that was still quite a large area of ground, so they spread themselves out. Teddy took his vantage point over to the side nearest the waterfall. He didn’t know why, but this seemed to him the most likely spot for the person to appear. There was something about it that reminded Teddy of the flowing hair of the woman in the stone carving. Harry and Julie were out of sight, as all three of them were under powerful disillusionment charms. But he knew they were close enough to hear him if he shouted.  
  
The wait was agonising. It stretched on for hours, with Teddy constantly on edge. Constantly alert, wand in hand, jumping up at every little sound. But he couldn’t let his guard down, even for a second. They had to play this exactly right and take this guy down before he even knew they were there.  
  
Teddy and Harry had done exactly this sort of thing a thousand times and were quite used to it, but Teddy wondered vaguely how Julie was getting on. She was likely to be bored out of her mind. Possibly even starting to let her mind wander. He wondered perhaps if it was wise to have left her on her own over there, maybe she should have been stationed with Teddy. Oh well, it was too late now. They couldn’t move from their positions without jeopardising the whole plan.  
  
Teddy was just wondering what time it was, and thinking surely it had to be almost time, when he heard a shuffling and a loud thump over behind some large boulders about twenty feet away from him. He jumped to his feet, wand poised, sure that this must be it. When Julie called out ‘over here’ he sprinted over, his heart hammering. Here we go, he thought.  
  
He was disappointed, however, when he reached the spot and found an elderly witch tied up on the floor in thick ropes, straining against a cloth gag over the mouth. Julie had lifted the disillusionment charm on herself and was stood over the witch, pointing her own wand threateningly at her with one hand, holding what Teddy assumed was the old witch’s wand in her other. The two broken pieces of the diadem lay on the floor between them.  
  
That was it? After all this time, hunting this person down? She just looked like a crazy old lady. Certainly not the hardened killer they were expecting. Teddy looked questioningly at Julie, but then realised she couldn’t see him. He tapped himself on the top of the head with his wand, lifting the disillusionment charm. Harry appeared on Julie’s other side, apparently having just done the same.  
  
“You two stay here, I’m going to make sure she’s alone” Harry said seriously, and then went off to go and look around the perimeter.  
  
Teddy kept his own wand pointed at the old woman too, but it hardly seemed necessary. She was struggling feebly against the ropes but they didn’t move an inch. Julie and Teddy waited in silence for Harry to come back, Teddy straining his ears for any sign of something amiss. After about five minutes, Harry returned.  
  
“No sign of anyone else” Harry told them calmly. “Let’s hear what she has to say.” He pointed his wand at the witch and the gag slipped down and hung loosely around her neck. She started gabbling frantically almost straight away.  
  
“You don’t understand!” she cried, wild eyed. “The SECRET, the POWER OF THE MIND! I HAVE to know, I have to SEE! We’ll NEVER get this chance again! I worked so hard to get here, you HAVE to let me SEE!”  
  
Harry took a small bottle of veritaserum out of his pocket.  
  
“If you consent to an interview under the influence of veritaserum, the charges against you will be significantly less severe” Harry told the witch seriously, crouching down to meet her eye level. “Do you understand what it does?”  
  
The woman nodded, but Teddy knew that legally, Harry had to explain it to her anyway.  
  
“It will force you to tell the truth to any question I ask. If you do this willingly the wizenagamot will look kindly on your cooperation and may consider reducing your sentence. But you are within your rights to decline.”  
  
“I know what it does!” the witch said impatiently. “I don’t care about any of that, yes, whatever. Just hurry! It’s nearly time! We need to SEE!”  
  
Harry dropped a couple of drops of the potion into the witch’s open mouth, which she swallowed obligingly.  
  
“Please hurry” she repeated. “It’s nearly time!”  
  
“Is there anyone else here with you tonight? Anyone else hiding, or on their way?” Harry asked abruptly.  
  
“No, no, it’s just me” the witch replied impatiently. Teddy saw Harry’s shoulders relax slightly. He felt a little tension melt out of himself.  
  
“How did you get this?” Harry asked her, picking up the diadem pieces.  
  
“Black market. Some shady artefact dealer. Paid him one million galleons.”  
  
“Where did you get that kind of money?” Julie asked, looking at the woman confusedly. She certainly didn’t look like someone with that kind of wealth.  
  
“It wasn’t my money. I took a vault key from one of the benefactors at my museum’s last fundraiser. I don’t even know that there was a million galleons in there. But there probably was. There was probably more…”  
  
Harry looked to Julie.  
  
“You know anything about that?” he asked her. That sort of case would fall to Julie’s apartment.  
  
“No” Julie replied, looking bewildered. “I should have heard about it if someone with a vault that big reported a missing key, that would be a big case.”  
  
“The bimbo probably doesn’t even know it’s missing yet” the old witch piped up. “Trophy wife, you know. All tits and no brain…”  
  
“WHEN did you acquire this?” Harry asked her, holding up the diadem again.  
  
“Only a few days ago. I’ve been negotiating with the dealer for months but I didn’t want to make the trade until the last minute. I knew you’d be on my tail after I had to silence those cowards back in Cambridge.”  
  
“Is that why you killed those people?” Teddy asked. “To keep them quiet?”  
  
“Yes, they would have blabbed. They were weak. Too scared to go after it. We had been talking about it ever since their school days when they used to come into the teashop in Hogsmeade. I used to be a waitress there. I overheard them one day talking about the diadem so I told them about the legend. The secret to unlock the power of the mind. They were fascinated. I thought they understood. I thought they would be happy.”  
  
“So what, you told them you were going after it and they threatened to turn you in?” Julie asked.  
  
“Yes” the woman scowled. “Cowards, all of them.”  
  
“What about the homes you broke into where no-one was hurt?” Harry asked.  
  
“Those people weren’t in on the plan. They didn’t even know about the legend. But I knew them too from back in my Hogsmeade days. I knew they had information that I needed. Star charts, rare history books, that sort of thing.”  
  
“But nothing was missing from the crime scenes” Julie said, in confusion.  
  
“That’s because I didn’t take anything” the witch said. “I read it and memorised it while I was there. I was doing the same thing at that old man’s house, but then he came in and caught me.”  
  
“That’s why you killed him?” Teddy asked, remembering victim number four, the historian.  
  
“Yes” the witch said again. If she felt any remorse for these murders she certainly wasn’t showing it. She was telling them all this in a very matter-of-fact way, as though it had all been a perfectly reasonable course of action. “I was so close by that point. I’d come so far. I couldn’t let you stop me.”  
  
“You must have known we’d be here tonight though?” Harry asked her. “After breaking into that astronomer’s house. He’s been studying this planetary alignment for years.”  
  
“I thought there was a chance you wouldn’t work it out. So few people know about the legend after all…” the woman said. She looked up at the sun which was starting to set, and she became agitated again.  
  
“Besides, it was a risk I had to take! We CAN’T miss this! It’s a once in a lifetime event! The secret to unlocking the power of the mind!”  
  
Harry stood up again, apparently satisfied with her story. Teddy thought it all certainly made sense, but this woman must have a few screws loose to go to all this trouble just to unlock a spell she would never get to use.  
  
“Right, let’s get her back to ministry” Harry said to Teddy and Julie. The woman let out a horrified shriek.  
  
“No you MUSN’T! We’re SO CLOSE! Any minute now! We HAVE to SEE, don’t you understand, we can’t have come all this way NOT TO SEE!”  
  
Teddy knew the sensible thing to do was get her out of here straight away, before anything dramatic happened with the diadem. They had no idea what it was going to do and they didn’t want to lose their captive. However, Teddy also had to admit, she sort of had a point. It would be a shame not just to wait another few minutes to see what would happen. It was a once in a lifetime event after all.  
  
Julie looked like she was thinking the same thing, as she looked between Harry and Teddy with a mildly pained expression.  
  
“I mean… _two minutes_ Harry…” she said quietly. “Aren’t you curious?”  
  
“Of course I am” Harry said. “But we’ve been chasing her for months! We can’t let her get away now!” He looked to Teddy for support, who knew he was right, and was about to begrudgingly agree.  
  
“You take her then” Julie said. “And we’ll stay, and see what happens…?” she suggested tentatively.  
  
Teddy smiled at her. Few people would be bold enough to question Harry Potter’s orders.  
  
Harry considered this for a moment, while the old witch broke out into hysterics, screaming that they had to let her stay and see it. Harry pointed his wand at her and re-instated the gag.  
  
“No” he said. “I’m not taking her down the mountain by myself. Not with curse breakers crawling all over it and God knows what else going on. It’s too risky.”  
  
Teddy gave Julie a consoling look, and prepared himself to follow Harry back down the mountain, but Harry didn’t move. There was a long pause.  
  
“ _Two minutes_ ” Harry said to Julie quietly. “And you, wand at the ready” he added to Teddy, who broke out into a grin.  
  
Harry handed the diadem pieces to Julie and turned his attention back to the old witch, who had stopped struggling and was now watching Julie, wide eyed with rapt attention.  
  
Teddy kept glancing back and forth between Julie and the old witch. Julie was holding the two pieces of the diadem together, how they should be before it was broken, and looking at the inscription. The old witch still hadn’t moved, and Teddy was quite confident in Harry’s abilities to keep her contained. But he wanted to keep an eye on her anyway, because he knew she would run for it if she got the chance.  
  
Harry looked at his watch.  
  
“Thirty seconds” he said.  
  
Julie held the diadem up towards to setting sun, the inscription facing them. Teddy noticed that Harry was trying to give his full attention to the old witch, but he couldn’t stop himself from glancing at it every few seconds.  
  
Teddy held his breath as the last few seconds passed. Then, suddenly, the writing on the diadem glowed with bright, golden light. Teddy heard himself let out an audible gasp. He looked quickly back at the old witch, remembering where he was, but she wouldn’t have left this spot for anything in the world. She was leaning forward, looking at the diadem in wonder.  
  
Julie brought her arms back in to look at the diadem more closely and Teddy took a step towards her. The inscription had vanished, and been replaced by a single word, in the shining golden text.  
  
_‘Knowledge’._  
  
Julie looked at it in confusion, turning the diadem over in her hands, to see if there was something on the other side. There wasn’t.  
  
“What…?” she looked at Teddy in confusion. But Teddy had started to laugh.  
  
Fucking hell!  
  
Teddy lowered his wand, as he knew any potential danger had passed, and allowed himself to double over laughing. He just couldn’t stop. It wasn’t funny, really, people had died… But OH GOD it was! It was SO funny! It was the funniest thing he had ever seen.  
  
Harry had apparently also decided they weren’t in immediate danger, and had gone over to inspect the diadem too. The old witch was edging forward, still bound in the ropes and the gag, trying to get a better look.  
  
“Teddy, what the hell are you laughing at?” Julie demanded, looking annoyed. “Do you know what this means?” she held up the diadem, looking frustrated.  
  
Teddy wiped tears of laughter out of his eyes.  
  
“The – the key to unlocking the power of the mind…” Teddy sputtered, and had to stop because he dissolved into laughter again.  
  
Julie and Harry were still looking at him, confusedly.  
  
“It’s knowledge!” he told them and then laughed again at the look of dawning comprehension on their faces.  
  
Julie looked down at the diadem with evident disappointment.  
  
“Are you fucking kidding me?” she said, disbelievingly.  
  
Harry looked amused, but was keeping his professional face on for the benefit of their captive, who was struggling against the ropes and the gag again. Teddy knew she would be screaming something along the lines of ‘that can’t be it!”  
  
“Apparently Rowena Ravenclaw had a sense of humour” Teddy replied, grinning, remembering how Helena had smirked when they had asked her about the legend.  
  
“Yeah well, four people are DEAD, Teddy” Julie reminded him irritably, which sobered him up considerably.  
  
“Yeah, sorry” he said, letting out a slow exhale, getting a hold of himself again. “It’s just… after ALL that… it’s a little bit funny, isn’t it?”  
  
Julie looked disapprovingly at him. Apparently she didn’t think it was funny.  
  
“Yes, it’s bloody hilarious” Harry said sarcastically, but Teddy could see the glint in his eye, and knew that he would be laughing too if no-one else were here. “Now come on” Harry added. “We need to get her back to the ministry.”


	23. How could I ever not?

Teddy sat alone on the deserted beach, looking out at the sun setting over the horizon. The waves were lazily lapping up on the sand just beyond his feet. A pleasantly cool breeze passed over him and he took a swig of his beer and sighed.  
  
He was on the same beach in Southern Thailand where he had worked as a bartender for six months all those years ago. The little beachfront bar that he had worked in had gone, and those of his friends from back then who still lived here had moved up a little in the world, now working as middle-management in restaurants and clubs. But life here was much the same now as it had been then. He was staying with an old friend in their tiny apartment just off the beach front and they spent their days relaxing at the beach, eating street food from those little carts dotted about everywhere and drinking cocktails in open air bars.  
  
But his friend had to go to work at a club in the evening, so Teddy was left to his own devices. He wasn’t bothered about this, he had no desire whatsoever to go out clubbing right now. So he invariably sat on the beach by himself and just tried to enjoy the peace and quiet of it.  
  
It was tranquil. It was beautiful. It should be paradise. But all Teddy felt was that dull ache. He had come back out here almost as soon as they had finished processing their prisoner and done all the last bits and pieces to officially close out the case. There was the paperwork; visiting the victims’ families to tell them what had happened; making sure the diadem made it into a museum without being stolen again; debriefing to the minister and attending a press conference. All of this had taken about a week. Teddy was pretty sure that this was the fastest he had ever turned around any paperwork in his life, as he normally left it sitting around for months. But he was desperate to be done with this case so he could get out of there.  
  
Harry had agreed that Teddy had earned a holiday, but had been rather taken aback when Teddy said he wasn’t sure how long he would be away. Harry had tried to give him the ‘everything is going to be OK’ speech again, but it hadn’t worked. Now that Teddy didn’t have the field work to take his mind off it, this awfulness with Jamie consumed him. The more time that passed without any contact from Jamie, the more Teddy started to lose hope that they were ever going to get back on track. And he just couldn’t handle it.  
  
So he had come back to Thailand, the place that he loved. The place that was such a nice escape, from responsibility. But he had found that he didn’t really want to be here, any more than he wanted to be at home. He reflected sadly that it didn’t matter where he was, it was going to hurt just as much.  
  
Still, he wasn’t ready to go home yet. He’d only been here for a few days and he was having a little fun catching up with his old friends. He was pretty sure that he and Jamie were over, by this point, and he had to come to terms with that somewhere, might as well be in tropical paradise. Besides, he just couldn’t face the prospect of potentially running into James, back home. It wasn’t exactly like they could avoid each other forever - he WAS Harry’s son. But Teddy couldn’t just pretend that everything was fine. He couldn’t SEE Jamie right now, if it was really over. It hurt too fucking much.  
  
Teddy did a double take, as he saw someone with red hair approaching him on the beach. Surely it was just because he’d been thinking about James right? That was why this stranger kind of looked like him, surely. It couldn’t possibly be…  
  
“Running away to Thailand Teddy?” James called, as he got within earshot. Teddy had to take off his sunglasses to make sure it was really him. Yes, it was unmistakeably him. He was wearing nothing but some board shorts, and Teddy would recognise that broad chest and those huge arms anywhere. He got a little closer and Teddy’s heart hurt as he looked at James’s face. He was a little tanned and much more freckled than usual, since he’d been abroad so much lately. And he looked just as hurt as Teddy felt.  
  
“A little fucking dramatic don’t you think?” James asked sounding very annoyed. He sat down next to Teddy. Not incredibly close, but close enough to make Teddy uncomfortable. Teddy was annoyed too. Jesus, he’d come out here to get AWAY from him, what the hell was he doing here? If he had come to tell Teddy it was over he needn’t have bothered. Teddy already knew that.  
  
“I’m not running away” he lied, looking out at the sea and not at James. “I’m on holiday.”  
  
“Well you look like you’re having a shit time.”  
  
“I am, thanks for noticing…”  
  
“It would have been nice if you’d told me you were going, you know? Rather than letting my Dad tell me. He thinks you’ve lost the plot, by the way…” James told him irritably.  
  
“That’s why you’re here is it? Checking up on me for Harry” Teddy bristled, still refusing to look at him.  
  
“I’m here because _I_ wanted to see you, you arse” James said irritably.  
  
Teddy sighed. He didn’t want to do this right now. It had been so peaceful here five minutes ago.  
  
“What do you WANT James?” Teddy asked, finally looking at him. He was surprised by James’s expression. Teddy was expecting him to look angry and defiant. But he just looked very upset.  
  
“I want you to come _home_ ” James said quietly.  
  
Teddy felt another wave of hurt wash over him.  
  
“I can’t…” he said, looking away again. “I’m going to need some time to get over this Jamie… I can’t just go back to being friends, like nothing happened… not for a while…”  
  
“ _Teddy…_ ” James said softly, and a shiver went down Teddy’s spine. James put a gentle hand on his shoulder.  
  
“Is that what you think I want?” he asked quietly. Teddy looked up quickly.  
  
“Isn’t it?” he challenged him, studying his expression carefully.  
  
“Of course not” James said frowning in confusion. “I love you, you fucking idiot!”  
  
Teddy felt slightly numb as that sunk in. That was the first time either of them had said it out loud. Not the ‘fucking idiot’ part of course, they said that to each other all the time. But the other bit. That was new. And that was big.  
  
“You what?” Teddy asked, softly. James looked a little bashful, but didn’t look away.  
  
“You heard what I said” James said defiantly.  
  
Teddy had known that he felt that way about Jamie since long before they even got together. But there was a certain amount of time it was customary to wait before springing that on someone, Teddy was sure. You didn’t just blurt it out on the first date. So he hadn’t said it. But he had thought about it. The trouble was, he didn’t really know how serious this all was to Jamie. He was still so young, and this whole thing was still pretty new really. Teddy hadn’t really expected ‘love’ to come into it. Not yet, anyway.  
  
“You mean it?” Teddy asked, frowning. James frowned back.  
  
“Of course I mean it, what sort of question is-“  
  
He didn’t get to finish his sentence because Teddy had pulled James towards him by the arm and kissed him.  
  
He kissed him for what felt like hours, but it was probably only a few minutes in reality. The kiss was fierce and passionate, but then slow and tender, then searching and hungry. And in it was everything Teddy had felt over the past three weeks and more. Sorrow, regret, longing, passion. But mostly love.  
  
Their lips broke apart but Teddy kept his face close to James’s, both of them breathing heavily. Teddy had one hand on the side of James’s face. He pecked James’s lips a couple more times. He felt like he never wanted to do anything else ever again besides kiss him.  
  
“I’m sorry” whispered James. “I’m sorry if I made you think that I didn’t want this anymore. Of course I fucking do. How could I ever not?”  
  
Teddy kissed him again, breaking it only to whisper back “I love you, Jamie. I love you too…”

-

As they walked back, hand-in-hand, to Jamie’s hotel room, Teddy asked him about his expedition to the Roman catacombs. James shrugged nonchalantly.  
  
“There’s nothing much to tell really” he said. “Some skeletons tried to fight us off and stop us getting down into the lower chambers, but we just tied them up and it was fine.”  
  
“No disembowelment curses?” Teddy asked. James laughed.  
  
“No, no disembowelments curses. Who have you been talking to?”  
  
“Bill mentioned it” Teddy said, a little embarrassed. James laughed again.  
  
“Bill just throws things out there like that all the time. ‘Hey James, watch out for fire crabs in Bermuda’. Like it’s no big deal. Scared the hell out of me the first few weeks I worked there… But most of the time the missions aren’t nearly as exciting as that.”  
  
Teddy frowned. He supposed he should have known that. After being in the industry for so long, Bill was probably completely desensitised to the dangers of what he dealt with on a daily basis.  
  
“Were you worried about me?” James grinned, ruffling Teddy’s hair affectionately. Teddy slapped his hand away, scowling.  
  
“No” he lied, unconvincingly.  
  
James smirked and Teddy gave him a disapproving look. But James then started looking appraisingly at Teddy, surveying him with interest.  
  
“What?” Teddy asked, a little self-conscious.  
  
“I’ve never see your hair this colour before” James replied seriously.  
  
“Oh, yeah” Teddy felt even more self-conscious. “I know, I kind of look like shit” he said apologetically. People had been telling him as much for weeks now, after all.  
  
“No you don’t” James said kindly. “You just… you don’t really look like yourself…. You look so normal.”  
  
Teddy laughed at that.  
  
“Are you saying I’m NOT normal?” he asked, playfully.  
  
“That’s exactly what I’m saying. You’re a total weirdo” James replied, deadpan. Teddy laughed again.  
  
“I like the blue” James shrugged, slightly bashful.  
  
Teddy smiled. He concentrated hard as he looked down at the fingernails on the hand that was clenched with Jamie’s, and was pleasantly surprised when they turned electric blue. He closed his eyes, and did the same to his hair, making it shorter and wavy also. When he opened his eyes he knew it had worked, because James was smiling affectionately at him.  
  
“Better?” he asked.  
  
“Much better” James said quietly, stopping to kiss him briefly on the lips.  
  
“So what happened with your case?” James asked, as they started walking again. “You catch the guy?”  
  
Teddy grinned. He knew that Jamie would LOVE this story, so he told it in painstaking detail, as though he was recounting it in front of a court of law. James was getting exasperated with him for going into extraneous detail, and kept telling him to get to the point. But Teddy knew he was enjoying it really. And Teddy also knew it would be worth the slow build up for the comedic payoff. He wasn’t disappointed, as when he got to the part where the word ‘knowledge’ was revealed on the diadem, Jamie cracked up.  
  
“Fuck off” he said breathlessly, in between the laughs. “You’re making that up. There’s no way that happened!”  
  
“I’m not!” Teddy insisted, laughing himself. “Ask Harry if you don’t believe me. I swear to God. ‘Knowledge’.”  
  
“Oh my God” James said, shaking his head, looking highly amused. “Did you laugh?”  
  
“I did” Teddy told him. “Harry had to do his serious face because, you know, the prisoner and that. Julie didn’t think it was funny at all. She was really pissed off.”  
  
There was a slightly awkward pause. That was the first time either of them had mentioned Julie since their fight back in Jamie’s bedroom. Teddy waited with bated breath to see what Jamie was going to do.  
  
“Well” James shrugged casually. “She was definitely never right for YOU then, was she?” Teddy breathed out a sigh of relief, smiling widely.  
  
“No, she wasn’t” he agreed, looking lovingly at James as they continued to walk in peaceful silence.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I couldn't resist a vomit-inducingly cliche happy ending.
> 
> Thanks for sticking with it guys, hope you enjoyed :)


End file.
